ecp

I will be starting medical school in about a year.
Are there interpreters who are knowledgeable in medical/clinical sign language?

In college I had "real time" captioning but the captioners were in another state and I swear some of them were illiterate. One of my favorite professors sat next to me at a symposium once and he was absolutely appalled by the quality of the captioning. He even complained to the dean about the poor quality.
in advance.

Deafness

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StenoKnight

As a CART provider/captioner myself, I'm mortified that you had to put up with substandard captions in college. Unfortunately there are far too many unqualified practitioners out there, and they reflect extremely badly on the rest of us. It requires an enormous amount of skill, experience, education, and preparatory work to provide quality realtime captioning -- especially in a technical field such as medicine -- and too few people are willing to put in the work to develop it. It's one of my long-term goals to CART a Deaf student through medical school, but I'm preparing for that goal gradually by providing CART for a Pharmacy student (challenging enough in its own right), reading as much supplementary medical material I can, and methodically updating my dictionary with physiological terms, drug names, and adfixes. It's quite a job, but I hope when and if the opportunity arises I'll be equal to the task. Whether you wind up using an interpreter or a captioner in your own medical school career, I hope you find someone who knows their craft inside and out. Good luck.

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Mirabai Knight * StenoKnight CART Services * Providing CART in New York City and across the USA

Hear Again

Yes, there are interpreters who are specifically trained in medical terminology. I had such a terp for my medical courses in college which included psychology, anatomy and symptomatology of mental illness.

As for the poor quality of CART services you are experiencing, there is no excuse for that. I would file a complaint with the disability office of your school. It is your right as a student with a disability to receive adequate transcripts that are readable, understadable and provide full access.

If your college is unwilling to provide a skilled CART reporter, you may want to ask if they can use a court report instead since they type verbatim.

I've used CART and court reporters, but prefer the latter since I am able to receive a 99% accurate transcript of what is said during lectures and class discussions.

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StenoKnight

I absolutely agree there. Shoddy CART is absolutely unacceptable. Sometimes Disability offices will hire unqualified practitioners or inappropriate notetaking services because they're not willing to pay the fees of qualified CART providers. The only way to stop this from happening is to speak up loudly and vigorously, and demand to receive complete and accurate accommodations.

Properly speaking, a CART provider is a qualified court reporter -- one who is able to produce accurate verbatim realtime output, and who has developed skills more appropriate to the classroom setting than a deposition or courtroom setting. I went to a court reporting school myself, spent a year and a half doing offline captioning, attained a speed of 225 words per minute, then spent an additional eight months in mentorship with a working CART provider before I felt qualified to work in a university setting.

Unfortunately, some other service providers have co-opted the word "CART" (which stands for Communication Access Realtime Transcription) and used it for everything from non-verbatim abbreviated notetaking systems such as C-Print and Typewell to voice recognition-based systems such as CaptionMic. Notetaking systems can't go above 140 words per minute or so; the average rate of speech is 180. Some of the best voice writers can offer realtime that's nearly as accurate as the output of qualified steno writers, but they're few and far between. More often you get someone who hasn't properly trained either their voice or their software, producing text at a disgracefully low rate of accuracy. Then you get the drop-outs from court reporting programs who think somehow that, if they can't hack court reporting, CART is something to fall back on, which is the most harmful fallacy of all. CART is far more difficult to do well than court reporting is, considering the density and variety of the material and the challenge presented by realtime; court reporters, if they get sloppy, can go back and edit their mistakes at leisure. A sloppy CART output is disastrous to a student, and the CART provider gets no second chances.

Sorry for the lecture, but this is something I take personally and feel strongly about. I'm sure interpreters feel the same way about unqualified people representing themselves as something they're not. I frequently find myself alternating classes with interpreters, since I think they're good for some things CART is not, and vice versa. For instance, the Pharmacy student I work for requested CART for all his lectures and ASL interpretation for all his lab and recitation classes. The interpreters allow him to participate more interactively in informal settings, but the CART lets him read all of the drug names and anatomical terms on my computer screen without having to rely on lots of frantic fingerspelling, and he's able to use my transcripts to study from afterwards. I think the combination works well for him.

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Mirabai Knight * StenoKnight CART Services * Providing CART in New York City and across the USA

ecp

Thanks for the replys.
StenoKnight- I'm glad you are learning all about pharmacy to help your student. I kept telling the disabilities office at my college that the captioner would be much moreuseful if they had a copy of the talk in advance (I mainly used captioning for the weekly symposia where nobel laurets and amazing people came to speak) unfortunately, the ITS (Information TEchnology) person was in charge of the CART and she is one of the densest people ever. She was also my boss at my job fixing computers. She was very nice but flaky as hell.

Hear Again- I graduated from college last May but I have been working on a handbook for professors/student affairs about how to work with d/Deaf and hard of hearing students. The disability office was truly amazing, I was the first severely/profoundly deaf student at my very small college in a few decades. They offered to get an Interpreter for all my classes but I choose not to use one because all my classes were very small and my professors were always willing to use the FM system and go over lectures with me after class. I had a standing "date" with my favorite professor in which he reserved his office hours for me one or two days a week.

My college is known for being very academically demanding but also extremely liberal and accepting. So it was a perfect fit and I miss that place.

jillio

ecp;

I have a copy of a handbook I wrote for professors, and another for students regarding their obligations under the ADA for the college disability services office I worked in while completing my Ph.D. I'll be happy to email you copies if you like. I also have one for terps and notetakers.

ASLGAL

jillio, could I impose and ask for a copy of the one for terps and notetakers?

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jillio

Need an email address. I'll have to attach, and each one is around 25 pages. Just PM me with the addy.

DeafDoc1

ECP,
I am a physician in an active clinical practice. There are interpreters who are trained in medical terminology, but they are typically in the situation of interpreting for the Deaf patient, not the practitioner. The terminology, complexity of information during a medical school education just doesn't compare. I have gone through a number of terps in my practice who have "medical backgrounds" but have been unable to facilitate communication between physicians with the speed and accuracy that medicine demands.

I have a terp now that has been with me for about 7 months. Her skills are excellent, spelling is accurate, and she had a pretty good working knowledge of medical terminology, although basic. Over time she has become more fluent in the language of my specialty, and we have developed a number of signs (some ASL, some English) specific to my patient population. I frequently provide her with reading and reference material, and we take 15-30 mins every day to review new terms and discuss ways to clarify the communication. I cringe when she is sick or on vacation, now.

Working with terps in medicine is an evolving process, and having several who are comfortable with the challenges of medical terminology is essential. Yes, it can be done, but it's not an instant process. And I still use CART for Grand Rounds and various lectures, and the skill level and knowledge of "medical-ese" varies tremendously. Getting notes or slides ahead of time provides a win-win opportunity for the CART provider and for you.

Good luck, and congrats on your acceptance to medical school! We need more Deaf doctors!

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jillio

We most certainly do need more deaf docs, and aren't you lucky to have found a terp that is so willing to do the research necessary to be the best assistance possible for your situation!

DURAY

there are more blind doctors than deaf doctors. Medicine is like the legal field, heavily English and very structured field.
Some terps specialized in medical terping. There is an association of deaf doctors, nurses, dentists, etc. google them.

DeafDoc1

Yes, AMPHL and it can be a good resource, though postings are sporadic. There's been a recent flurry about medical school and stethoscopes. AMPHL - Association of Medical Professionals with Hearing Losses

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