1. Our Training Manual. Culturesmart’s manual, The Essential Piece, reflects over 180 years of collective medical interpreting experience. Frequent updates reflect changes in medicine and standard interpreting practices.
   
   
2. Language Coaching. Culturesmart’s 45-hour program includes 15 hours of language-specific group work led by active medical interpreters. They focus on difficult vocabulary and role plays. We’ve offered nearly 30 languages: Spanish is most requested, but we work with many other languages, including Hindi, Russian, and Chinese.
   
   
3. Relevant Role Plays & Activities. Our Essential Piece manuals include hundreds of role plays and activities. Exercises practice skills, improve accuracy, and provoke discussion on ethics and standards of practice.
   
   
4. Assessments & Certificates. Culturesmart’s assessments include mid-term and final testing. Rigorous written and oral final assessments cover vocabulary and interpreting skills. Unlike some training organizations, we only issue certificates to candidates who earn them, not to recognize good attendance. Recipients of certificates are also eligible for continuing education points from The American Translators Association.
   
   
5. A Schedule for Learning. We spread our 45-hour course out, typically over six or nine weeks, so trainees have time to study and understand material instead of feeling overloaded by consecutive days of classes.
   
   
6. Flexible Train-the-Trainer Program and Room to Grow. We conduct our user-friendly train-the-trainer program in two formats: on the job or using materials designed for five days of classroom training.
   
   
7. Anatomy, Physiology, and Medical Procedures. We supplement our manual with Dr. Charles Clayman’s The Human Body, a colorful and accurate guide to human anatomy. We cover subjects even some working interpreters misunderstand: stents, angioplasty, and differences between heart attacks and heart failure.
   
   
8. Standards of Practice. Culturesmart training covers two established standards of practice, from the International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA) and the California Healthcare Interpreters Association (CHIA). We also use the Code of Ethics for Interpreters in Health Care, from the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care.
   
   
9. Health Care Disparities. We place our fact-based coverage of disparities within the context of the interpreter’s job by discussing disparities and the importance of trained medical interpreters to good health outcomes.
   
   
10. Focus on Customer Satisfaction. We pride ourselves on meeting clients’ needs. We customize all programs to fit health care organizations’ requirements: we don’t deliver the exact same chapters and courses to everyone.

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