Illustration by JENNY YURSHANSKY/Daily Bruin To find out
more information about LINC, e-mail [email protected].
By Julie Yoshioka
Daily Bruin Contributor
For some people, a trip to the hospital can be traumatizing
enough without having to worry about communicating with hospital
staff in another language.
In an attempt to ease this concern, Students Society LINC for
UCLA Hospital Patients was founded in spring 2000 to facilitate
communication between patients, doctors and nurses.
“It can be such an impersonal experience,” said
Esther Melamed, LINC president and co-founder. “Imagine going
to the hospital and not being able to understand what your doctors
and nurses are saying to you.”
LINC, which stands for Library Interpreting Caretaking, offers
interpreting services to hospital patients who can not speak
English.
“I have quite a few relatives who can’t speak
English well and I’ve had to interpret for them
before,” said third-year physiological science student
Shirleen Loloyan.
“It’s not fair to patients to be in an unfamiliar
setting who can’t speak the language,” she continued.
“I wanted to help out with that.”
It also gives students the chance to work with doctors and
nurses on a personal level and to witness doctor-patient
interaction first-hand.
The idea for LINC formed while Melamed worked as an interpreter
for the hospital.
In search of a meaningful clinical experience where she could
see patients and doctors interact, Melamed joined the
hospital’s Interpreter Services, which is now directly
affiliated with LINC, where volunteers wait for hospital officials
to call for their services.
“I enjoyed it a lot,” Melamed said. “I would
talk to a lot of patients, but I felt like I could do more than
just wait for an appointment.”
Although the hospital already provided some interpreters, the
services were limited, according to Melamed.
“Many patients were either left without an interpreter or
had to talk on the phone with interpreters,” she said.
Before founding LINC, Melamed started a library of foreign
languages for the hospital, realizing that often when patients
would ask for reading material in their native language, the
hospital would have little or nothing.
“I looked on the Internet and found on-line magazines and
printed them out,” Melamed said. “I also asked
professors if they had any materials.”
Professors donated books and magazines in Russian, French,
Hebrew, Spanish and German. Since then, the library received
additional donations of materials in Persian and Arabic.
After continuing to interpret for the hospital, Melamed decided
to expand the translating services offered by students.
She then talked to fellow students Lori Panossian, vice
president of internal affairs, and Amber Misseiger, who agreed to
help form the club.
“I wanted to get involved in a program to interact more
with doctors and patients,” Panossian said. “I also
wanted to help patients who spoke my native language.”
Students interested in LINC must first attend an orientation
session at the hospital where they learn more about the program and
the interpreting process, and take language proficiency tests.
“We ask them to do an oral interpretation of a variety of
medical sentences and phrases,” said Tony Padilla, director
of patient relations and volunteer for the Medical Center.
“Then we ask individuals who are experts in those languages
to see how accurate the oral interpretation is.”
“Our goal is to get a large group of dedicated students
who are excited to help patients,” Melamed said.
Although it is not necessary to be a native speaker, volunteers
must have proficiency in the language they want to interpret.
“We use mainly common words, but it could get technical
depending on the situation,” said Panossian.
LINC members must also be registered as hospital volunteers,
which gives them health clearance.
Once accepted into the program, they must pay a $10 membership
fee, which helps buy books for the library, and commit to
volunteering 80 hours during the year. They also interview with a
patient liaison and shadow a translator to familiarize themselves
with the program.
“This is designed so that volunteers have an appropriate
level of maturity and communication skills to visit patients in the
hospital,” Padilla said.
After the training, LINC volunteers are able to help hospital
officials who seek specific translators from Interpreters
Services.
LINC has now grown to a membership of 30 interpreters who speak
Spanish, Russian, Armenian, Farsi, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin,
Tagalog, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Cantonese.
Currently, Spanish is the most widely utilized language, with
American Sign Language as second, according to Interpreter
Services.
For many members, the prospect of interaction with patients,
doctors and nurses seems to be a common reason for joining
LINC.
“One of the main reasons why I got involved was because I
wanted to help break down the language barrier between doctors and
patients,” said Richard Ornelas, third-year biology student.
“I also got to see how patients and doctors
interact.”
The acronym LINC is symbolic of the attempt between doctors and
patients in trying to understand one another, according to Melamed.
Additionally, it also links students and doctors because it allows
students to see if they want to actually go into the medical
profession.
“It is the perfect clinical environment,” she said.
“You can see what it feels like to be the doctor and the
patient. It’s a good experience for pre-med students and you
get to really help people.”
With their interpreting skills, LINC members have assisted
patients and doctors in communication during medical examinations,
surgical consent situations, and in labor and delivery rooms.
“Students learn a great deal about what it’s like to
be a physician and what physicians do,” Padilla said.
“It also helps them enhance their medical terminology and
help them discover for themselves whether this is actually the
field they want to pursue.”