By Danielle Zielinski
Daily Press (Newport, Virginia)
Copyright 2007 Daily Press
JAMES CITY, Va. — It’s almost 9 a.m., and Alicia Lowery’s Spanish class sits around a table, bright construction paper nametags set out before them.
She projects letters onto a large screen, and the students begin reviewing vowel sounds, pronouncing each letter over and over.
It’s a lesson you might see in a first-year Spanish class in any local middle school. But Lowery is a professor with Thomas Nelson Community College, and her students are adult employees at Olde Towne Medical Center — some learning a new language for the first time in order to better interact with their patients.
“I admire — big time — the professionals in this field who are taking the time to learn to communicate with their Spanish-speaking patients,” Lowery said. “It shows that they care.”
The eight-week class is free to the students, an arrangement made possible by a one-year grant from the Williamsburg Community Health Foundation, said TNCC provost William Travis.
Seven firefighters and paramedics from the Williamsburg and James City County Fire Departments participated in the first session over the summer, and 12 employees of Olde Towne Medical Center are currently in the middle of the second eight-week offering.
Another course for emergency responders is scheduled to start Sept. 24 at Thomas Nelson’s Historic Triangle Campus, and Travis hopes to hold second-level classes for students who want to continue later this fall.
“There really is a rather significant Spanish-speaking population in the Williamsburg-James City County area,” Travis said. “If there is interest, we would continue to offer this as a regular course.”
The goal, Lowery said, is not to make the students fluent in Spanish, but to give them the phrases they need to calm and assist Spanish speakers in the course of their everyday jobs.
In class Monday, her students practiced saying things like “How can I help you?” “Where does it hurt?” and “Everything will be OK.”
“You want to teach what is practical for them — the phrases that they actually need for their environment,” Lowery said.
For a Spanish-speaking patient in crisis, she said, having a doctor or nurse that can talk to them in their language is good medicine.
For students, even after just four weeks, the classes are paying off.
Alan Norman, a doctor at Olde Towne Medical Center, said he recently had a follow-up visit with a Spanish-speaking patient he had treated weeks before.
“He was like, ‘Last time I saw you, you didn’t speak Spanish. That’s great,’” Norman said.
“He was very impressed.”