TIS’s Amy Olen’s interdisciplinary research supports students as she investigates the roles, perceptions, and behaviors of Spanish-English medical interpreters in highly distressing, high-acuity pediatric medical encounters. Medical interpreters facilitate communication across languages and cultures for medical providers and critically ill children and their families in these settings.

Amy was awarded SURF (Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows) funds for to Josie Carballido (Psychology) to analyze results from interviews conducted with Children’s Hospital medical interpreters on the supports and resources for coping with distress and burnout; and for Sheridan Sinnen (Nursing) to work on the project “Nurse Guidelines for Working with Medical Interpreters” with the goal to identify and mitigate gaps in nursing pedagogy for working with interpreters. Both Josie and Sheridan will have have a first-author publication by the time they graduate from their BS programs at UWM.

In addition, Amy has allocated her start-up funds to support Sthephany Escandell (MA, Educational Psychology), who participates in analyzing interpreter interview data with Amy and her co-PI Paulina Lim (Psychology) and works with Amy and Sheridan on the Nurse guidelines. Sthephany will work with Amy’s team over the next two years and integrate this research into her MA thesis.