SanMiguel MedSpanish
Location
Total immersion (San Miguel) , community based, clinical medical Spanish and cultural literacy for US health care providers
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Mesones 38-15
Project City
San Miguel de Allende
Project Province/State
Guanajuato
Project Postal/Zip Code
CP37700
Project Country
Mexico
Your idea
Year organization founded:
2002
Year initiative began:
2002
Service/activity focus:
Other
If Service/activity focus is "other" please define in 1-2 words below:
Health care Communication
YouTube Upload
Project URL
Name Your Project
SanMiguel MedSpanish
Describe Your Idea
Total immersion (San Miguel) , community based, clinical medical Spanish and cultural literacy for US health care providers
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Total immersion (San Miguel) , community based, clinical medical Spanish and cultural literacy for US health care providers
Describe what makes your idea unique--different from all others in the field.
The Mexican Health care system helps train US providers to care for Latinos and in turn we provide training and certification of Mexican health care providers
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how did you create them?
University of New Mexico (for CME Credit), Varios US Residency Programs and Medical Schools, the Health Ministry Hospitals and the the Red Cross ambulance system.
In which sector do these partners work? (Check all that apply)
Citizen sector (non profits, NGOs) , Public sector (government) , Academic sector (universities).
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
The program allows US providers to communicate with Spanish speaking patients while providing US style certifications for Mexican providers.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation.
400 students trained from the United States with measurable results and almost 1,000 Mexican health care professionals trained and certified in Basic Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Pediatric Advanced Life support, Basic and Advanced Obstetric Life Support , and Trauma Life support. The integration and development of emergency care in Mexico and Latin America.
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation?
Medical Spanish and cultural literacy is an essential medical skill and needs to be taught in formative stages of US health care professional training.
How many people does your innovation serve or plan to serve? Exactly who will benefit from your innovation?
We have trained about 400 people, including two medical Spanish interpreters. These students learn in a Mexican health care system and there is professional communication and development between the two health care systems. An emergency physician from the US may see 60,000 + patients during his/her professional life time. In many areas in the US, large amounts of Hispanics are seen in the emergency departments.
What is the key decision that you are trying to influence through your innovation/design?
Adoption of cultural and language skills by health professionals from the US to create better, more sensitive providers.
What have you learned about how people respond to your innovation/design?
US professionals suffer from culture shock on arrival , but is 3-4 weeks become linguistically and culturally more fluent. We are a language program imbeaded in a community based medical training center rather than a "retooled" language school.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
Students pay tuition. Sometimes , with Continuing Medical Education credits which their employers pay or they otherwise can receive tax deductions.
Financing source
Annual budget
Before, the PACE Center relied entirely on MedSpanish tuition. Now the PACE Center is supported more by the community based training in Mexico. 50 students@ $800 per student is about $50,000
Annual revenue generated
50 students would generate about $50,000 USD for further program development and operations. This includes buying training equipment for local certification.
Number of staff (full-time, part-time, volunteers)
2 Full Time Staff (Shared with the PACEMD Program ... www.pacemd.org) 2 Part time Spanish instructors and one part time coordinator.
What are the main financial barriers, and how do you plan to address them?
Medical Students and Residents must often seek scholarships to attend. Most are willing to pay anyway for the excellent experience.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow and scale the initiative?
Because of our network of emergency care providers in Latin America, we are prepared to offer programs in other Latin American countries. There are tens of thousands physicians trained every year. almost all require this type of training which is not as effective in their usual US clinical environment.
The Story
What was the motivation or defining moment that led to the creation of this innovation? Tell the story.
- I am a socially conscious emergency physician who was trained in the United States and who spent a large part of my childhood in Mexico. In 1996 I came to Mexico on vacation and ran into a big car accident / disaster area. The first responders that arrived had minimal training. I saved someones life with the equipment on the ambulance. It was at that point in my life, like Paul on the toad to Damascus, that I was struck with the vision that I needed to work in Mexico and Latin America to improve emergency care. I moved my clinical practice to the Brownsville Texas area so that I could develop my program in Mexico. I literally became a migrant worker, commuiting to the Rio Grande Valley twice a month by bus to central Mexico intermittently for 10 years.
Initially , I worked with the Health Ministry and brought specific certification courses for the training of nurses in trauma management as well as having developed an Advanced airway course and an emergency ultrasound course.
Some 400 MedSpanish students from the US have been trained to provide Latino care in the US and The MedSpanish School helped us fund the training center.
We continued to develop the certification courses and became a center for the Basic Life Support, Advanced Cardiac Life Support and the Pediatric Advanced Life Support certification courses as well as the center for Mexico for the Advanced Life support for Obstetrics program
Please name and provide a personal bio of the social innovator behind this initiative.
Dr Haywood Hall is an Ashoka fellow and an international emergency physician. He has served on a federal disaster team at WTC911. Through his activities he has become the representative of the American College of Emergency Physicians to Mexico and was named an "ACEP Hero". He has innovated by starting the first clinically based Medical Spanish immersion program and pioneered in community based training in emergency care. He helps to organize emergency medicine internationally.
At what stage is this initiative?
Implementation and impact .
What resources would you need to take your initiative to the next stage?
We need to have better marketing in the US to various health care education and service sectors.
How did you hear about this contest and what is your main incentive to participate? (Confidential)
I am an Ashoka fellow
 | Guillermo Krasovsky said: Iy's very interesting your work and I think we can do something to gorw ir, with make a franchise model of youir clinics and open it ... about this Competition Entry. - 1031 days ago read more > |
