[Julia Rosales]

You did a good job at furthering exploring the factors that inhibit mental retention, and offered specific examples

[Julia Rosales]

I appreciate the fact that you went beyond just mental retention and restated the importance of other abilities when interpreting

[Julia Rosales]

In a field that requires a vast vocabulary, maintaining good mental retention is crucial.
Factors that inhibit good mental retention include lack of exercise and sleep.
To maintain a healthy brain, your body must also be healthy. By exercising your body, your brain is benefitted by physical activity, because when you exercise you are strengthening your body. This then causes an increase in oxygen going to your brain, which helps reduce the risk of certain disorders that are linked to memory loss
A healthy lifestyle includes getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation, whether caused by stress or a busy schedule, causes your brain to not function properly. Getting enough sleep is necessary to build good mental retention. In the deepest stages of your sleep, is where the brain’s memory improving activity happens.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle ensures that we are in the adequate physical and mental conditions to bring out our best abilities, and reduce the risk of forgetting any words.
As Medical interpreters, we are expected to interpret in real time, which means we have no time to search up terms we may have forgotten, so it is important to make sure to remember as much as we can. These situations can become stressful at times, especially if we are not in a good mental or physical state. If we choose healthful choices, it will be easier for our brains to function.Which is why good mental retention makes good medical interpreters, in which our memory will not negatively affect the quality of the message we hope to deliver.

[Julia Rosales]

The comparison between prefixes, root words, and suffixes to building blocks is a helpful visual.

[Julia Rosales]

Putting examples from non medical terminology was very helpful, and fun to try out as well!

[Julia Rosales]

Medical interpreting is a field that heavily relies on knowing a vast amount of words, and in multiple languages. This can make it tricky and overwhelming to try and memorize words in the beginning, especially with all the complex medical terminology
The advantage of word structure is that a word is usually made up of different smaller bits, which have been given a meaning themselves. They are like a mosaic of different parts coming together in the forms of prefix, suffixes, and root words to create a new word with a combination of definitions into one meaning.

When you are able to recognize these smaller parts of the word, it will be easier for you to digest what you are learning. Taking the example from the manual, if you didn’t know the word Diagnosis instead of hearing a word such as Diagnosis, you could break it down into its prefix, root, and suffix. Dia (prefix) means complete. Gnos/o(root), with the combining vowel o, means knowledge. Lastly the suffix sis, means process. Taking these definitions and putting them into proper english grammar, you get the phrase “process of complete knowledge”

By memorizing common breakdowns of words such as the prefixes, roots, and suffixes, you will be able to better understand the meaning of each word, and hopefully have a better time memorizing their meanings. However, the only sure way to ensure you memorize more words, is to constantly repeat fluency exercises such as flashcards and mini quizzes to keep your mind sharp.

[Julia Rosales]

I like that you went beyond just healthcare services and looked at a bigger picture, how these services are important in multiple aspects of an individual’s life.

[Julia Rosales]

I agree that one the best ways to continue to improve these services is through continued monitoring, that way any issue can be first identified and then solved.

[Julia Rosales]

Order 13166 was mandated by president Clinton in 2000. It states that if a health facility receives any forms of government funding, they must also provide adequate interpreting services to any patients in need of language interpreting. These laws were put in place in order to provide LEP individuals with an improved access to various services, since it extends to legal, and education services. It was a large improvement in setting standards for the care of LEP individuals.
I see examples of this mandate being in Rhode Island state. The Rhode Island department of Health offers various resources in multiple languages online for anyone to access. In hospitals such as Women and Infants, there is a specific desk that offers interpreting services from certified interpreters in various languages, for any patient/visitor of the hospital. They make sure to distinguish certified and qualified, demonstrating the standards they expect from their interpreters.
However, at a smaller level, it may be harder to maintain these standards in regulation. Smaller and local facilities may not have the same resources available to them, making it harder for them to give their LEP patients adequate care. This is why it is important to keep in mind CLAS standard 12. Which would mean to conduct regular assessments of the local communities, to be able to find ways to maintain higher standards. Improvements can always be made to ensure that LEP patients receive the highest standard of care. We can ensure this by maintaining the fifteen national CLAS standards in mind,and enforcing them adequately.

[Julia Rosales]

hello! I agree that this field will help connect with those who require our help, and contribute to a better healthcare system.

[Julia Rosales]

Nice to meet you! Your story is very interesting! I resonate with your desire to immerse yourself in different cultures and learn something new!

[Julia Rosales]

I agree with the lowering of one’s voice. Because the physician is not looking up at the patient or you, body language is would not be the most useful here. To portray the emotion of the patient, you would want to transmit them through tone.

[Julia Rosales]

Hi! Your analogy of the translation app to translation was insightful. Sometimes when using them they might get the context wrong bc of direct translations and they are not very accurate (there have definitely been some advancements these past few years though). Which is where Medical Interpreting seems to differ because you are able to witness these contexts and deliver an accurate message that takes multiple cues into consideration in real time.

[Julia Rosales]

Before reading the chapter, I thought the words translator and interpreter were somewhat interchangeable, however I now understand that they have distinctly different roles.
Translators must deal with transferring a usually written message accurately from one language to another while maintaining the meaning of the message through more grammatical research and references over more time. They must also maintain the style of the original authors’ writing as they translate their work. A challenge translators face is finding translations for niche phrases that might not make sense directly translated.
Interpreters often have to transfer the entirety of oral messages from one person and language to another in real time, as well as making sure to understand and convey nonverbal cues in real time. This means you need excellent communication and listening skills. A challenging aspect of interpreting is that it is very reliant on the interpreter’s memory, and you are expected to interpret in real time. So this might be draining and may even be stressful at times.
Although some skills overlap between the two professions, they are vastly different once you understand more of the context in which each is used. It is important to understand the differences between these two professions because they are used in different events/contexts. Like I mentioned earlier, interpreters work in real time, and translators have longer to study the meaning and contexts of the words. Interpreters are likely to be hired to live events, while translators can be hired to discuss written documents.

[Julia Rosales]

Hello everyone I am Julia Rosales! I am a high school senior and I have lived in Rhode Island my whole life. I speak Spanish and English. I grew up in a Spanish speaking household. Growing up, I sometimes had to do my best to translate and communicate with doctors for my mom on the occasions where medical interpreters were not available during appointments. So I had learned that just being Bilingual was not going to be enough to help her during appointments, due to all the specific medical jargon I had never come across before. Becoming a medical interpreter will give me a chance to help people better navigate the healthcare system, and I hope to have an impact on people who were in similar situations like my mother. In the future I wish to become an OB-GYN, and be able to give quality culturally competent care to my patients. I know that it is important to see representation within the healthcare field. By becoming a medical interpreter I can ensure I learn more about Medical terms that I will surely need in as I aim towards my future career goals. A short term goal is that, as I currently work as a Marketing Intern in a local clinic, and with the help of this course I hope to be able to create future flyers in Spanish that will accurately deliver information to Spanish speaking patients. I look forward to learning alongside all of you guys and wish you all luck!

[Author]

Posts