Mission and overview:

Medical Interpretation program is a pioneering initiative of Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC-Q) in partnership with Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar (HMC). The program aims to:

1. To ease communication among participants (health professionals and patients) in international and culturally diverse medical education and health care environment.
2. To train sufficient interpreters to meet the hospital needs and to ensure that they provide thorough, accurate interpretation. To effectively evaluate, assess the interpreters' skills on regular basis in order to identify any problems and provide intervention or remedial training as necessary.

The program has commenced on January 2, 2008 providing Arabic, Hindi and Tamil language services to the medical students during their clerkships. Working together with HMC, the program is planning to extend interpretation services to serve all HMC hospitals.

Key achievements:

In our efforts to raise the awareness of communication barriers in and their impact on the quality of health-care provided to multi-cultural communities, we have conducted various presentations titled:

• Introduction of the Medical Interpretation Program
• The Role of Medical Interpreter
• Trained VS. Untrained Medical Interpreter
• Communication Barriers and Cross Cultural Issues in Health Care Settings.

Our team:

Maha Elnashar, Program Specialist
Post-Graduate degree in Translation
B.A. in English Literature and Language
Medical Interpreters Trainer "Trained by Cross Cultural Healthcare Program" (U.S.A)
Member of The American National Council on Interpreting in Health Care.

Huda Abdelrahim, Co- Trainer & Medical Interpreter
Post-Graduate degree in Education
Bachelor of Science
Medical Interpreters Trainer "Trained by Cross Cultural Health Care Program" (U.S.A.)
Member of the American National Council on Interpreting in Health Care.