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respond to the following discussion post as a peer with at least 1 reference and 150-200 word count

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respond to the following discussion post as a peer with at least 1 reference and 150-200 word count.

(In my line of work - medical interpreting between American Sign Language (ASL) and English - one sub-group within the Deaf Community experiences a disparity in access to healthcare compared to the rest of the Community. Deaf who were born in other countries, used the native sign language of that country, and wrote in the natively spoken language of that country, and then move to the U.S. experience severe struggles within the U.S. healthcare system.

Upon arrival in the U.S., they typically begin the task of learning ASL by associating with their local Deaf Community, but if they need to access the healthcare delivery system before achieving fluency, the ASL interpreter and the Deaf patient struggle to communicate with one another, thus compromising their care.

Other subgroups within the Deaf Community whose ASL skills have been compromised, such as Deaf with hepatic encephalopathy, intellectual disabilities, a cognitive impairment; Deaf with fine motor deficiencies, such as severe arthritis or cerebral palsy also present special communication challenges. For these individuals, we Certified Hearing Interpreters (CHIs) [interpreters who can hear] rely on Certified Deaf Interpreters (CDIs) [interpreters who are Deaf themselves] to team with us in providing interpreting services (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, n.d.a). Because CDIs have a native understanding of ASL compared to CHIs who usually learn the language as a second language, they can be instrumental in working with the Deaf patient with other impairment(s).

Therefore, we employ this same method with Deaf non-native ASL signers (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, n.d.a). CDIs turn the interpretation into a more gestural version to the Deaf patient and then turn the Deaf patients’ communications into an ASL interpretation for the CHI’s benefit. This system can be highly effective if a CDI is available. I live in a rural area, and the nearest CDI is an hour and a half away. The hospital’s video remote interpreter (VRI) system used to include CDIs, but they switched to a different provider within the last year, and the new provider has yet to hire any CDIs, so we CHIs are often left to fend for ourselves with non-native signers (C. Brown, personal communication, n.d.).

I believe the hospital should require its new VRI provider to provide CDIs as one of its language options. Most ASL interpreters do at least some freelance work. This company could even contract with CDIs on an “as-needed” basis and pay them only for the appointments they interpret (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, n.d.b). The hospital system in which I work is willing to schedule with CDIs through VRI ahead of time, which is what we had to do with the last provider due to the high demand for CDIs and their limited availability (C. Brown, personal communication, n.d.)

References

Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. (n.d.a). Standard practice paper: Use of a Certified Deaf Interpreter. RID.org. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3DKvZMflFLdbXFLVVFsbmRzTVU/view

Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. (n.d.b). Standard practice paper: Video remote interpreting. RID.org. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3DKvZMflFLdTkk4QnM3T1JRR1U/view