Medical translation class on resume

[mamacita2]

I am graduating soon with an ADN in nursing. A lot of hospitals require the BSN, and I plan on continuing my education to get the BSN. however, I need to work while I go to school. I worked 1 year as a nursing assistant. I was looking around and I thought of taking a class where I can learn to translate medically in my own language. Is that a good thing to put on the resume??

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Is this a single class or is this a course that works towards credentialing you as a medical translator in your own language. One class, not very helpful and rather meaningless. A full course would likely be more meaningful. Professional credential---absolutely.

[JWEMT]

I would just list Fluent is English and XXXXXXXX language on my resume. As a health care provider you are allowed to interpret in your own language anyway. My job gave me a certificate of interpreting. which is repeating someones words in another language. Translating is changing the words on paper into another language.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Agree with the above. You might want to take the class anyway, as you will learn a good deal about the ethics of interpreting and translating. It's not just facility with language, though that's what many people think. You can teach your patients what you know in your own language, but interpreting what the patient is saying to someone else is more than, "He says that he's always constipated." Certified medical interpreters must give a verbatim rendering of the patient's own words, e.g., "I am all stopped up." The clinician is then obligated to figure out, by further discussion, what he meant; the interpreter must render the clinician's words back to the patient verbatim. The reason is that you never want to be in a position of being accused of changing anybody's words.

There is a professional group of professional medical interpreters, IMIA - International Medical Interpreters Association

Their website has standards, ethics, and all sorts of useful information for you.

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

I would just list Fluent is English and XXXXXXXX language on my resume. As a health care provider you are allowed to interpret in your own language anyway. My job gave me a certificate of interpreting. which is repeating someones words in another language. Translating is changing the words on paper into another language.

Sorry, that's not exactly accurate. In the US (under CMS rules) we have to either provide 'certified' (by a nationally recognized organization) medical interpreters or equivalent. Multi-lingual staff are not a substitute unless the facility has a process whereby they validate competency that is absolutely equivalent to the national certification for medical interpreters. Actually, some of my organization's facilities are trying this for multi-lingual staff, but there is a huge amount of difficulty involved - how to 'test' for validation; how to make them available 'on call' if they are part of regularly scheduled staff; how to free them up from their assigned group of patients so they can be used elsewhere; how to compensate for 'extra' work .... AAARRRRGGGHHH.