Workforce Language Services

With an increase in immigrants of all language backgrounds, hospitals are recognizing the need for additional full-time interpreters. The Chicago Tribune notes that it’s not just Spanish-speaking patients, but patients of many languages backgrounds, that increasingly need interpretation services. Rather than rely on a family member or custodian to interpret sensitive medical information for patients, hospitals increasingly use telephonic interpretation and have increased their onsite interpretation staff. They also are finding, however, that it’s not just the language but the culture that comes into play in the clinical setting.

One minute, Cristina Villanueva is in the neonatal nursery explaining to a Spanish-speaking mother why her English-speaking doctor won’t let her baby go home right away. The next she is hurrying to the emergency room to interpret for a Mexican patient admitted for a bleeding ulcer. Then it’s off to the front office to assist a Spanish-speaking woman about to have an MRI.

From the delivery room to the chaplain’s office, Villanueva and a team of 10 other Spanish-speaking interpreters spend their days crisscrossing Sherman Hospital in Elgin, where nearly a quarter of the patients are Hispanic. Villanueva lives with the constant chirp of her pager. She says she walks up to 6 miles a day in her thick-soled, black shoes, dashing through the hospital’s halls to keep up with Hispanic patients’ needs.

Spurred by the surge of immigrants in the suburbs — and a growing awareness of the potential dangers of miscommunication — hospitals and clinics that once relied on secretaries, janitors or even children to explain complicated medical terminology and deliver life-altering diagnoses are increasingly hiring interpreters, training bilingual professional staff and using phone interpreting services to bridge the language gap.

Health-care advocates say the need has become especially acute in communities trying to keep pace with fast-growing immigrant populations.