Healthcare interpreters often encounter challenges due to cultural differences and language barriers. This presentation will explore the crucial roles of cultural awareness and patient advocacy in ensuring effective communication and equitable healthcare. Attendees will learn how to bridge cultural gaps, support patient rights, and enhance their skills in managing miscommunications. This webinar aims to empower interpreters to be more proactive and confident in their roles, ensuring better patient outcomes and fostering an environment of mutual understanding and respect. This presentation is designed for interpreters, trainers, healthcare providers, and administrators.
This webinar has been approved for the following CEUs: 1 CCHI CE hour, 0.1 IMIA/NBCMI CEU, 1 ATA CEP, and 0.1 RID CEU. Note that you must have attended the live session to receive these credits.
About the presenter: Jorge Mejia has recently assumed the role of Language Access Director at Ventura County Medical Center, where he is building a language access department from the ground up. With close to 20 years of experience in Healthcare Interpreting, including 8 years in leadership roles, Jorge brings extensive expertise in managing language access programs and addressing the unique needs of diverse patient populations. At Natividad, where he served for 9 years as a Healthcare Interpreter—spending half of that time as an Interpreter Services Supervisor—Jorge played a pivotal role in mentoring new interpreters, developing training programs, and advocating for equitable communication solutions for indigenous language speakers from Mexico. His work has consistently centered on fostering cultural sensitivity and delivering high-quality interpretation services in healthcare settings.
A Licensed Trainer for community interpreters, Jorge is a recognized speaker on best practices in healthcare interpreting and cultural awareness. He has delivered numerous presentations on topics such as trilingual healthcare interpreters and the advocacy of Indigenous language needs in healthcare. Residing in California's Central Coast, Jorge is deeply committed to bridging communication gaps in healthcare and championing inclusivity through solutions that are both culturally and linguistically appropriate.
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how cultural influences affect communication and patient care and learn strategies to bridge cultural gaps and ensure mutual understanding.
2. Explore the balance between neutrality and advocacy and address systemic barriers and complex terminologies that hinder effective patient advocacy. 3. Analyze real-world scenarios to understand common pitfalls in medical interpreting and learn techniques to prevent and address miscommunications due to cultural and linguistic differences.
4. Establish protocols for matching interpreters to patients' specific language variants and promote an environment that ensures open communication and addresses patients' needs and preferences.
No, CCC is an organization dedicated solely to interpreter and cultural competence training. Our mission is language access. However, we do provide graduates of The Community Interpreter® with a list of nearby language companies and public organizations that employ interpreters. We also occasionally send out job postings to our program graduates and/or e-newsletter subscribers at the request of other organizations.
Cross-Cultural Communications is the leading international training agency in the U.S. devoted to community interpreting, educational interpreting, healthcare interpreting and cultural competence. It is also the only organization that licenses community interpreters across the U.S. and in other countries. We regularly train bilingual staff as well as contract interpreters. We also provide training and consulting services to private companies, non-profits and government agencies. Our programs are grounded in a mixture of theory and practical, hands-on activities.
The Community Interpreter® International, or TCII, is a 40-hour certificate training program for interpreters who are just starting out or those experienced interpreters who are looking for a recognized qualification. Subjects covered include the interpreting code of ethics and standards of practice in order to give participants a solid grounding in the profession. This is complemented by practical, hands-on activities such as role-plays and interactive group discussions. The program fulfills the 40-hour training requirements considered by many (certifying bodies employers and industry associations) to be the minimum needed to entire the field.
At the moment, a combination of two CCC programs fulfills this requirement: Medical Terminology for Interpreters (7.5 hours) and The Community Interpreter® International. Since TCII is open to all community interpreters and the subject matter covers education and social services as well as medical interpreting, at the end of each TCII session any participant who is seeking medical interpreter certification will be given a letter from CCC, stating the number of hours that can be counted towards this requirement. Typically 34-36 hours count towards the 40 hour requirement.
Yes, although the CE credits offered for each program will vary according to course length and content. Our programs are currently approved for continuing education credits by the following organizations:
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