Breaking hospital language barriers – Interpreters help patients, doctors discuss health care – Chicago

“One minute, Cristina Villanueva is in the neonatal nursery explaining to a Spanish-speaking mother why her English-speaking doctor won’t let her baby go home right away. The next she is hurrying to the emergency room to interpret for a Mexican patient admitted for a bleeding ulcer. Then it’s off to the front office to assist a Spanish-speaking woman about to have an MRI.

From the delivery room to the chaplain’s office, Villanueva and a team of 10 other Spanish-speaking interpreters spend their days crisscrossing Sherman Hospital in Elgin, where nearly a quarter of the patients are Hispanic. Villanueva lives with the constant chirp of her pager. She says she walks up to 6 miles a day in her thick-soled, black shoes, dashing through the hospital’s halls to keep up with Hispanic patients’ needs.”*

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