I am very excited to begin a new class with Gayle Tang in the Healthcare Interpreting Program at City College of San Francisco this week.

Health 91K – Language Access Strategies and Effective Collaboration with Healthcare Interpreters

The class has quite the long name! Our professor has lovingly dubbed it LAS on her website. There, she describes the course’s aim:

This course explores language access strategies and tips for effective collaboration with interpreters across linguistic and cultural barriers in healthcare settings.

This goal sounds rather obscure and has taken me some time to decipher. From my understanding, we will dive into the laws and regulations surrounding healthcare interpreting. Most of my classmates are other students in the City College Healthcare Interpreting Program, but after our first online “check-in,” I learned that there is also a small percentage of students coming from business management programs wishing to learn more about how to incorporate interpreters into hospital operations.

Summer Course Online

Due to the short timeframe of summer classes, they are usually very intensive. This has caused me to shy away from them in the past. Actually, this will be both the first summer class and the first online class that I have ever taken–should be a challenge! The class is only three weeks long, but the course is set to take approximately 17.5 hours per week.

You might have noticed that I put quotation marks around “check-in.” That is because this is an online course and our check-in took place online. CCSF uses an online learning platform called Canvas, where we have a class forum. I am glad to see that we are encouraged to interact with each other here. After reading others’ posts, it turns out that a lot of people were concerned about feeling isolated during the class, but I think this tool will help us stay in touch.

LAS and Healthcare Interpreting

Luckily I have the time to dedicate to learning right now, as I expect that taking this class will pay great dividends. Looking at healthcare interpreting requirements from a policy standpoint will help me understand the system that LEP patients must work with, and help me make more informed decisions as I try to assist them navigate the US healthcare system.