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Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism
BACKGROUND: Humanistic care in medicine has shown to improve healthcare outcomes. Language barriers are a significant obstacle to humanistic care, and trained medical interpreters have demonstrated to effectively bridge the gap for the vulnerable limited English proficiency (LEP) patient population....
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6006684/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29914460 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1254-7 |
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author | Vargas Pelaez, Alvaro F. Ramirez, Sarah I. Valdes Sanchez, Chavely Piedra Abusharar, Shady Romeu, Jose C. Carmichael, Connor Bascoy, Soraya Baron, Rose Pichardo-Lowden, Ariana Albarracin, Nathalia Jones, Claire C. Silveyra, Patricia |
author_facet | Vargas Pelaez, Alvaro F. Ramirez, Sarah I. Valdes Sanchez, Chavely Piedra Abusharar, Shady Romeu, Jose C. Carmichael, Connor Bascoy, Soraya Baron, Rose Pichardo-Lowden, Ariana Albarracin, Nathalia Jones, Claire C. Silveyra, Patricia |
author_sort | Vargas Pelaez, Alvaro F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Humanistic care in medicine has shown to improve healthcare outcomes. Language barriers are a significant obstacle to humanistic care, and trained medical interpreters have demonstrated to effectively bridge the gap for the vulnerable limited English proficiency (LEP) patient population. One way in which medical schools can train more humanistic physicians and provide language access is through the implementation of programs to train bilingual medical students as medical interpreters. The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate whether such training had an impact on bilingual medical student’s interpretation skills and humanistic traits. METHODS: Between 2015 and 2017, whole-day (~ 8 h) workshops on medical interpretation were offered periodically to 80 bilingual medical students at the Penn State College of Medicine. Students completed a series of questionnaires before and after the training that assessed the program’s effectiveness and its overall impact on interpretation skills and humanistic traits. Students also had the opportunity to become certified medical interpreters. RESULTS: The 80 student participants were first- to third- year medical students representing 21 languages. Following training, most students felt more confident interpreting (98%) and more empathetic towards LEP patients (87.5%). Students’ scores in the multiple-choice questions about medical interpretation/role of the interpreter were also significantly improved (Chi-Square test, p < 0.05). All students who decided to take the exam were able to successfully become certified interpreters. Ninety-two percent of participants reported they would recommend the program and would be willing to serve as a future “coaches” for interpreter training workshops delivered to peer students. CONCLUSIONS: Our program was successful in increasing self-reported measures of empathy and humanism in medical students. Our data suggests that implementation of medical interpreter training programs can be a successful strategy to develop of humanism in medical students, and aid in the development of sustainable language access for LEP patients. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-018-1254-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6006684 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60066842018-06-26 Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism Vargas Pelaez, Alvaro F. Ramirez, Sarah I. Valdes Sanchez, Chavely Piedra Abusharar, Shady Romeu, Jose C. Carmichael, Connor Bascoy, Soraya Baron, Rose Pichardo-Lowden, Ariana Albarracin, Nathalia Jones, Claire C. Silveyra, Patricia BMC Med Educ Research Article BACKGROUND: Humanistic care in medicine has shown to improve healthcare outcomes. Language barriers are a significant obstacle to humanistic care, and trained medical interpreters have demonstrated to effectively bridge the gap for the vulnerable limited English proficiency (LEP) patient population. One way in which medical schools can train more humanistic physicians and provide language access is through the implementation of programs to train bilingual medical students as medical interpreters. The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate whether such training had an impact on bilingual medical student’s interpretation skills and humanistic traits. METHODS: Between 2015 and 2017, whole-day (~ 8 h) workshops on medical interpretation were offered periodically to 80 bilingual medical students at the Penn State College of Medicine. Students completed a series of questionnaires before and after the training that assessed the program’s effectiveness and its overall impact on interpretation skills and humanistic traits. Students also had the opportunity to become certified medical interpreters. RESULTS: The 80 student participants were first- to third- year medical students representing 21 languages. Following training, most students felt more confident interpreting (98%) and more empathetic towards LEP patients (87.5%). Students’ scores in the multiple-choice questions about medical interpretation/role of the interpreter were also significantly improved (Chi-Square test, p < 0.05). All students who decided to take the exam were able to successfully become certified interpreters. Ninety-two percent of participants reported they would recommend the program and would be willing to serve as a future “coaches” for interpreter training workshops delivered to peer students. CONCLUSIONS: Our program was successful in increasing self-reported measures of empathy and humanism in medical students. Our data suggests that implementation of medical interpreter training programs can be a successful strategy to develop of humanism in medical students, and aid in the development of sustainable language access for LEP patients. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-018-1254-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-06-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6006684/ /pubmed/29914460 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1254-7 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Vargas Pelaez, Alvaro F. Ramirez, Sarah I. Valdes Sanchez, Chavely Piedra Abusharar, Shady Romeu, Jose C. Carmichael, Connor Bascoy, Soraya Baron, Rose Pichardo-Lowden, Ariana Albarracin, Nathalia Jones, Claire C. Silveyra, Patricia Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
title | Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
title_full | Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
title_fullStr | Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
title_full_unstemmed | Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
title_short | Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
title_sort | implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6006684/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29914460 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-018-1254-7 |
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