WICU12

Erie's Hispanic population keeps growing. So an Erie hospital is taking steps to be sure patients who speak Spanish can communicate with doctors and nurses. Saint Vincent Health Center now has a Spanish interpreter on-site every weekday. And under a new contract with the Multi-Cultural Community Resource Center, interpreters will be on-call evenings and weekends. The goal is to be sure the growing number of Hispanic patients understand complicated medical terms and feel comfortable speak with hospital staff. Interpreter Monica Weivoda said, "I'm not only the bridge between patients and the doctor, I am also a confidante for them. And I'm here to give them better quality service that they deserve." MCCR Executive Director Joel Tuzynski said, "It is important when they are here they get quality care. We think by working closely with Saint Vincent we're going to be able to maintain a dialogue between the patients, our clients, to provide better health outcomes for them." The hospital says it might expand the service to include other languages because of Erie's growing numbers of refugees from overseas. Linda Dougan of Saint Vincent Health Center said, "We are starting with Spanish but we are seeing other languages grow very quickly as well. We will be looking and evaluating this to see if there should be a similar arrangement with other languages too."

Paul Wagner