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With the push of a button, tears flowed and stress levels tumbled at, of all places, the counter of a Walgreens pharmacy on Cleveland Avenue.
Typically, picking up or handing out medication isn’t an overwhelmingly emotional experience. But for Walgreens pharmacists and the Somali population in Columbus, seeing a Somali interpreter instantly appear on a real-time video feed does wonders for bridging the language barrier.
“Something like, ‘What’s your name? What’s your date of birth?’ It’s the easiest little thing, but it can take 15 minutes, and you can still end up with nothing,” said Brent Kovalyak, district pharmacy supervisor for Walgreens. “You’d end up communicating with them, but it might be a half-hour later.”
All users need to do is press a remote-control button, and then tell the operator on the screen what language they speak. Network interpreters can handle more than 150 languages.
Somalis most likely will see Habiba Egal appear on the video feed, and that puts them at ease, said Andrew Panos, president of the interpretation company, which is based in Las Vegas with operations in Columbus.
“When they see Habiba, the level of comfort is greatly enhanced because then they say, ‘I’m going to be OK because someone’s going to understand what I have to say,’ ” Panos said.
The two Walgreens were selected to test the product because they’re in areas where many Somalis live. Columbus has the second-largest population of Somalis in the nation, behind the Minneapolis area.
About 20 percent of prescriptions filled at the Walgreens at 3093 Cleveland Ave. are for Somali customers. The difficulties with the English language that Somalis and other immigrants in Columbus can experience present an added challenge, pharmacy manager Jason Winters said.
“We’re not only here to provide a product, but it’s equally important to provide the information that goes along with it,” Winters said.
Through no fault of their own, foreign-speaking customers sometimes leave the store without a good grasp on how to properly take their medication, despite the best efforts of pharmacists and customers alike.
“It’s kind of scary that we give out all these medications, and you know they have no idea how to use them,” said Emily Endres, a pharmacist at the store.
Without the video unit, Winters knows a Vietnamesespeaking customer couldn’t have been well-served a few weeks ago.
“We’d have been flying blind,” he said.
Kovalyak said the system makes foreign-language customers’ experience easier. “And they’ll feel welcome.”
The Language Access Network set up shop three years ago and has quickly made a home in the interpretation business — and in Columbus.
The video system at Walgreens is one of several products the company offers. It’s working on a “less obtrusive” model with a smaller screen that will be installed within a month, Panos said.
A similar, wireless system has been in use at the Ohio State University Medical Center for slightly more than a year.
“They love it,” Panos said. “It’s instant interpretation.”
The network’s interpreters must complete 53 hours of training in interpretation and cultural awareness to be hired. They also hold focus groups twice a month to talk about real-world situations and how they handled them.
Panos has ambitious expansion plans. He hopes that images of his interpreters soon will appear on screens in banks, post offices, prisons, airlines and in emergency vehicles.
“Those are marketplaces that are currently on our radar that we’re trying to capture,” Panos said. “There’s some very large organizations that we’re in talks with right now.”
He intends to anchor that development in Columbus.
“A lot of the clients that we’re trying to get, we’re trying to base them out of central Ohio,” Panos said. “As we expand, we want to duplicate cities like Columbus in providing interpretation, so it’s a good stepping stone for us.”
Source: Columbus Dispatch, July 5, 2006
