National Technical Institute for the Deaf

Members of the Task Force on Health Care Careers for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Community hosted a series of focus groups last week in hopes of learning about the needs of current and future students considering careers in health care.

Fifteen members of the Task Force met this week at Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Most - but not all - task force members were from four partnering institutions: NTID; Gallaudet University; the National Center for Deaf Health Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center; and Rochester General Health System.

Members attended a focus group of medical professionals who are deaf or hard of hearing and working as doctors, pharmacists, lab technicians or nurses to better understand the barriers they overcame to have and do their jobs.

Several said they faced attitudinal roadblocks when they even contemplated working in the health care field. Others said they were repeatedly passed over for job promotions.

Directly using the telephone was a requirement for some jobs, they were told. A pharmacist could only take a prescription request from a doctor, even though he couldn't hear on the phone. Privacy laws hindered others from relaying confidential medical information at times.

Access was also a major issue for many. Having a qualified interpreter - and deciding who pays for it - was debated in their experiences. Some panelists suggested having a national funding pool to pay for educational interpreters, much like is done for relay calls.

They also talked about their motivation to enter such a challenging field. A paramedic from Tennessee said he simply grew up around ambulances because his father and mother worked in that field. Others entered the field because they want to help people.

Nghi Lu, a medical resident in radiology at Rochester General Hospital, was born in Vietnam where her parents talked about extreme suffering. "I just want to help the suffering. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to become a doctor," she said.

Panelists also talked about challenges in the workplace. It can be hard to hear in a busy trauma room in an emergency department when oxygen is hissing, monitors are beeping and several things may be said by a number of people. One emergency room worker said he sometimes brings in a technician to tell him what is going on in the chaos.

A focus group of students eager to enter a medical career also spoke about access issues, difficult testing procedures and acceptance into college programs when it might cost a college $200,000 per student to pay for interpreters through their medical school experience.

"We collected a lot of data in terms of personal stories and experience which is very important to complement the statistics which we have gotten," said Rose Marie Toscano, co-chair of the Task Force. "We've started to grapple with some of the implications of the recommendations that we would like to make. And we discussed the importance of maintaining a national focus in the work of the Task Force."

The Task Force will convene next on Jan. 18 and 19, 2011 at Gallaudet University in Washington.