Workforce Language Services

Combine a highly trained population of recent immigrants with a shortage of health professionals in Rhode Island.  Seems like a perfect match for filling the need for health care professionals while allowing immigrants to work in their field, doesn’t it?  However, there are two barriers which prohibit this from happening: the difficulty of transfering foreign-earned credentials and licenses and the fact that many of these professionals only speak limited English. 

The Rhode Island Welcome Back Center run out of Dorcas Place in Providence provides programming to facilitate this transition.  Not only does the center work with the clients on their language skills and provide support for licensing exams, they also connect immigrant professionals with U.S. doctors to teach them about the culture of medical care in the States:

Escudero, a native of Rio de Janeiro who immigrated to give a better chance to himself and to his two children, already took two of the three extensive exams to obtain a license to practice medicine.
      ”I have been observing an American doctor in Middletown for four months and he is helping me to improve the communication with the patient,” he said. “Here they have a lot of details and it’s not easy. The culture is different from the South American culture. I know the Brazilian reality very well. In Brazil, they don’t have the equipment to make the right diagnostics. It was very frustrating. Here… we can’t waste time.”

To read more details on the program, click here.