When I started working as a community interpreter, I was finding it hard to understand medical terms when they came out during a medical interpreting for a Chinese patient. Hold on, doctor, let me Google this on my phone, while putting my doctor and patient on the hold.
To save such embarassment, I attended a medical terminology course organized by Monash Health. It was a 4-6 week course and we were given lists of terms for the different systems in the body and sometimes diagrams. No doubt we learnt the prefixes and suffixes, to understand that the links between appendix, appendicitis and appendectomy. I didn’t sit through the whole course to receive the certificate, because I was finding memorizing terms quite dry and boring.
I then started interpreting for medical delegations from various Chinese hospitals, hosted by hospitals in Melbourne. Sitting through a morning case sharing session, I only managed to understand half of the content, and to interpret less than that simultaneously to the Chinese delegation under my charge; walking around the wards wasn’t much fun either, as I struggled to read the shorthands on the patients records when my charge were shown those as part of the discussion of a patient’s history. Knowing the Chinese names for each English term does not give me an understanding of that discussion. And without understanding, there will be no genuine interpreting!
To do my job properly, to be part of that conversation, I actually need to have the background medical knowledge to understand the relationships between the concepts, the relationships between the anotomic structures, the relationships between the chemistry readings. I started looking for such resources that can be understood by me as a beginner, that is at the same time affordable.
Five few years ago, I came across the OnlineMedEd website, which offers free online videos to undergraduates preparing for their medical licensing exams. It is taught by a humorous American physician Dr. Dustyn Williams, founder and lead educator of OnlineMedEd, in partnership with Dell Medical School in University of Texas at Austin. It has five sections: Basic Sciences, Clinical, Residency, Falculty and Nutrition. Most of the lectures are free, with Dr. Williams explaining the content in front of a white board, with his three color markers, not that different from a traditinal lecture theatre. I was thrilled. I have finally found what I need so badly!
I have been a royal user of that website since. I am very grateful for Dr. Williams and his team to have put up such wonderful contents, for an interpreter like me, and others who are not doctors but would like to know more about their bodies and conditions, at a deeper level.
Free Online Medical Education for Interpreters
