When it comes to healthcare, quality medical interpreting can have a profound impact on patient outcomes.
Using professional interpreters reduces the risk to patients and enhances their health literacy, which in turn empowers patients to be proactive and experience better outcomes. Medical interpreting is a specialization within the field, as it requires a command of terminology and concepts.
By using medical interpreter certification as a standard process to qualify interpreters you can ensure you’re providing meaningful language access for your patients. This enables your organization to comply with federal laws while also improving patient experience and outcomes. Additionally, it allows your organization to justify pay increases to bilingual employees and improves their own professional development.
What Is Medical Interpreter Certification?
Although medical interpreter certification programs vary, most typically consist of an oral examination that assesses accuracy, completeness, and knowledge of medical terminology as well as a section on the skills, practices, and knowledge necessary for interpretation.
This portion of the certification program should address interpreting ethics. For example, medical interpreters should represent themselves and their abilities truthfully, observe confidentiality, and refrain from acting as advocates except in exceptional circumstances.
LanguageLine Solutions® offers a medical certification test that has been developed over three decades of medical interpreting expertise.
The test assesses knowledge of an interpreter’s understanding of:
- Medical terminology
- Medical procedures
- Interpreting skills and protocol, such as information-retention techniques and interventions during an encounter
- Culture-specific medical practices
The certification covers a wide range of topics, including health insurance, public health, managed care, medical specialties, emergency response, women’s health, men’s health, and more.
The test takes 45 minutes to an hour and is administered over a landline phone by a team of qualified testers. Test administrators have qualifications that include a master’s degree in translation and interpretation, as well as years of experience in medical interpreting.
Providing effective medical interpretation takes more than being bilingual. But most employers lack the capacity to test language proficiency or the interpretation-specific skills and practices that are required. This is where medical interpreter certification programs come in, offering a way for an organization to evaluate its employees and advance their professional development.
Please contact LanguageLine to learn more about our medical interpreter certification.
About LanguageLine
LanguageLine has been the world leader in innovative language-access solutions since 1982. The company sets the global standard for phone, video, and onsite interpreting, as well as translation of the written word. LanguageLine is trusted by more than 30,000 clients to enable communication with the limited English proficient, Deaf, and Hard of Hearing communities. LanguageLine provides the industry’s fastest and most dependable access to more than 35,000 professional linguists in 290-plus languages — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Please do not hesitate to contact us!
