A brand new course for
Medical Interpreter Trainers
This course is designed to highlight the teaching technique of context-based teaching and learning. Context-based teaching and learning is an outgrowth of problem-based learning, a teaching approach used in medical schools.
Instead of starting with teaching content (vocabulary for anatomy & physiology, diseases & conditions, etc.), we start with the context. That is, we start with situated practice of a patient and provider in a medical context.
How do we create our context? We start with a simulation, of sorts. We build our curricular content around a "standardized patient."
What's a standardized patient?
Did you ever see this Seinfeld episode...
...the one where Kramer signs up to play a patient at a teaching hospital?
Take a look 👉🏻
Do medical schools actually do this?
Not just the better ones, as Kramer says, most do!
Just as you saw in the clip, actors/patients are assigned a chief complaint and a diagnosis, which not only teaches diagnostic skills, but interviewing and communication skills.
Better still, at least for us, they record them!
How can these videos help interpreters?
Again, the standardized patients (i.e., the actors) are provided with the chief complaint, a few additional symptoms, and a brief back-story. The provider (i.e., the medical student) is only given the patient's name, the chief complaint, and perhaps some test results. With only that basic information, the conversation unfolds! The dialogue and the interactions that follow are all natural and authentic -- mimicking the very practice situations that interpreters are called into. As such, these videos become excellent resources for interpreters (of any language) to gain insight into the diagnostic and consultative discourse of patient and provider!
Join me for:
Diagnostic & Consultative Discourse in Medical Interpreting:
A context-based teaching approach
This 12-month, train-the-trainer provides spoken language medical interpreter trainers with the video and curricular resources to use in their own training courses with interpreters of any language.
Many training materials in interpreter education are language-specific which, for languages of lesser-diffusion, have to be augmented to meet the differing linguistic and cultural needs. However, since we all share English in our language pairs, and since we all work in the American medical context, what if we started there? Then, instead of having to augment and revise existing training materials, you, the trainer, are able to layer and interweave your own medical interpreting expertise onto the practical situation.
In other words, these recorded interactions provide us with, the ever-important CONTEXT -- which is what we build the training around.
Show me an example
Who am I?
By way of introductions, I'm Robyn Dean, PhD. I have been a nationally certified signed language interpreter for over thirty years with particular service in the field of healthcare. I conduct research and scholarship in decision-making and ethics in community interpreting. I have over twenty publications with international reach, all of which focus on the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks used to advance the practice of community interpreters. Currently, I am an Associate Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where I am the lead instructor on the Institute’s postgraduate degree in healthcare interpretation.
The Context
Interpreters & interpreter trainers regularly say, "it depends on the context..."
Agreed! And, what's more...
... if our work depends on the context, then let's teach starting from the context!
Which contexts?
These video recordings of standardized patients take you behind the curtain to listen into diagnostic and consultative discourse of patients and providers in primary care, urgent care, consultations, folllow-ups and screenings.
There are a total of twelve different chief complaints:
1. Chest pain 1
2. Wrist injury
3. Shoulder pain
4. Chest pain 2
5. Back pain
6. Abdominal pain
7. Breast cancer
8. Physical exam
9. Prostate cancer
10. Diabetes
11. Hypertension
12. Safe sex
The Course Details:
The class sessions will be held monthly from 7:00pm ET until 8:30pm ET.
We meet on the following dates:
- 28th February
- 28th March
- 2nd May
- 30th May
- 27th June
- 25th July
- 22nd August
- 26th September
- 24th October
- 21st November
- 19th December
- 23rd January (2026)
All sessions will be recorded and posted for later viewing.
More details:
A ~20 minute standardized patient (SP) video will be released each month for your review, about 1 week before the scheduled Zoom session.
Each Zoom session will include: a review of the newest SP video, along with a demonstration and discussion of the relevant teaching topics and curricular resources to use with your students / trainees.
Following the live session, you will be given a link to access the SP video along with any related materials. You can then, in turn, share them with your students / trainees.
The cost of the course is $347, payable via credit card. Or in monthly installments of $33.
There are limited seats for this course (~20).
Hold a seat | Pay LaterGot Questions?
How long do can we use these SP videos?
Do we have to know demand control schema?
Are these videos downloadable?
Can these be used for evaluation purposes?
Does this course offer CEUs?
I have more questions, so...?
Register to just hold your seat!
By completing the form (just click below), you are not committing to the course. Make sure you get your questions answered first. You can use the 'hold a seat' form to pose questions.
Seats are limited to ~20.
Hold a seat | Pay later