PETITION FOR THE VIETNAMESE TRANSLATOR, KIM CHI NGUYEN, TO BE FULLY ACCESSIBLE TO PATIENTS. Tom Miller Director of Security MetroHealth Hospital We are writing to petition for Mrs. Kim Chi Nguyen, the Vietnamese interpreter at MetroHealth Hospital. Mrs. Nguyen's work as a translator at MetroHealth is greatly valued in the Vietnamese community. Her skills on translating medical terminologies from English to Vietnamese and vice versa are extremely vital to patients who suffer from limited knowledge about their conditions due to a language barrier. It is even more important for the Vietnamese elders and young children who could not fully express themselves and translate between the two languages. Recently, patients have noticed her unavailability due to the fact that her translation hours have been dramatically reduced, close to none. We are requesting that her service as a translator to be fully accessible to the hundreds of Vietnamese American patients in the greater Cleveland area. Mrs. Nguyen's language skill is crucially important to patients, especially when it comes to important information that could mean life or death. D.N. is a regular patient at MetroHealth Hospital. Like many of the Vietnamese patients who come there, she does not speak, read or write English. She overdosed on her medications and was admitted to the Emergency Room at MetroHealth due to a misunderstanding of the correct prescribed dosage amount. This incident could have been prevented in the first place had Mrs. Nguyen been there to accurately translate to D.N. about the correct amount of dosage. This incident along with many other cases could be prevented with Mrs. Nguyen's capability and (most importantly) availability to translate for Vietnamese patients. We are petitioning equal language accessibility much like other languages, such as Spanish, that are available on-call twenty-four hours, seven days a week for patients. We are petitioning for rights of Vietnamese patients to receive better healthcare services and to eliminate language barriers that could hinder our community's well-beings. Sincerely, The Vietnamese American Community, The Asian American Community & supporters.

Sponsor