Academic Major: Spanish
Advisor: Kelly Bonnar
Title: Comparing Necessity vs. Accessibility of Medical Interpretation in New York
This project would explore necessity vs. accessibility of medical interpretations for patients in Western New York and the North Country. It would explore the concepts around medical translation availability and necessity in a rural and urban section of New York through data collection from medical professionals and patients. This project would benefit my academic goals because it intersects my degree with my future career path. I am interested in going into medical interpretation, which means that this project would be beneficial to understand the anticipated divide between ESL speakers and the medical field. It’s also a personal project, as I am highly interested in bridging the gap between ESL speakers and their ability to navigate America’s primarily English-speaking population. This project will be a lot of people skills. I will involve myself with multiple hospitals, reaching out to ask for interviews and potential additions of data collection methods in their hospitals. For this, I will have to be prepared to work extensively with multiple medical professionals. Professionalism and time management will be crucial for the success of this project. I also will learn data management techniques to understand, and project collected data. For that, I will have to investigate research methods and data collection methods. My mentor’s specialty and extensive work in the library will be influential for increasing my skills in these areas. I hope to publish these findings in an academic journal, perhaps even going as far as going to a conference to present the findings if they are relevant enough to do so.