Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Interprepedia, a space where I'll be sharing with you resources, reviews, and the occasional rant about all things interpreting. My name is Rosa and I'm a dual certified medical interpreter and if you're interested in becoming certified or you would like to learn more about the credentials available, this video is for you. And keep watching until the end because I will share with you which program worked better for me. In case you didn't know it, there are two entities that offer a nationally recognized credential for healthcare or medical interpreters. There's the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters or CCHI and the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters or NBCMI. CCHI is accredited by the NCCA which is an entity that basically oversees their certification process. NBCMI had this credential in the past for Spanish but in early 2018 they decided not to pursue it to reallocate resources to improve their program in other languages. This raised a lot of questions in our industry but the bottom line is as far as I know, both credentials are equally recognized and accepted nationwide. And did you know that they actually have a history in common? Well since the mid 80s different organizations had been working to create a national certification but it wasn't until 2008 when a group of them officially joined forces and became members of a coalition. They would develop their first national certification for medical interpreters. However, in 2009 a couple of these members announced they would develop their own certification program and they founded the NBCMI and later on that same year some of the original members of the coalition founded the CCHI. Now let's compare these credentials. Both offer two levels of certification. The first one is the one you earn after passing a written test in English and it's valid for all languages. CCHI is called CoreCHI and NBCMI is called HubCMI which they started offering in 2020. The second one is available only for certain languages after passing an oral test and at the moment CCHI offers the full credential called CHI for three languages which are Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin and the NBCMI offers the full credential called CMI for six languages which are Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Vietnamese, and Korean. To get started both programs require candidates to register. The registration cost is $35. There are also requirements to meet and the common ones are the minimum age which is 18 and having at least a high school diploma or GED from a U.S. based or foreign institution. Now here is where I noticed significant differences. You have to prove proficiency in English and in another language. If you don't have a diploma or have not taken a proficiency test in either one, CCHI takes into consideration the time you've spent studying or working in a country where the language is spoken. However, NBCMI does require either a diploma or meeting the minimum score in one of their approved language proficiency tests. Also, while both require 40 hours of medical interpreter training, CCHI accepts a combination of academic and non-academic courses in medical interpreting plus they allow you to add up hours from certain on-the-job training. However, NBCMI is very specific about the courses approved for their program. Once your registration is approved, the deadline for you to take the written test varies. With CCHI, you have six months to take the written test. With NBCMI, you have one year. CCHI's written test is a computer-based test offered year-round and it's administered at specific testing sites, but as of April 2020, they are allowing candidates to test from home temporarily, waiting on the NCCA to give final approval to make it permanent. It has 100 multiple choice questions, about 75% of which are related to ethics and standards of practice, and about 25% are related to medical terminology. You get two hours to complete it. The NBCMI's written test is also a computer-based test offered year-round at designated testing sites or from the comfort of your home. It has 51 multiple choice questions, about 40% of which are related to ethics and standards, and about 60% are related to medical terminology. You get 75 minutes to complete it. The cost of the written test with both organizations is $175. After you pass it, if there's an oral test available in your language pair, there are deadlines to keep in mind. CCHI gives you up to one year to take the oral test and the NBCMI gives you up to two years. For the oral test, CCHI has specific testing windows each year and you can only test at one of their approved testing sites. NBCMI offers these tests year-round and you can test at designated testing sites or at home. CCHI will test you in four areas, consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, sight translation, and translation, which you will see in the test in that particular order. For the consecutive segment, there are four scenarios with straightforward vocabulary and terminology, and while the utterances are fairly short, the scenarios are long. There are two simultaneous segments, from English and into English, and as far as I remember, each one lasts about a couple of minutes and the speech should be around 120 words per minute or less. You have to sight translate two short texts from English and into English and the translation is done by selecting an answer from a multiple choice question and it's from English into the other language. The NBCMI test has 12 mini scenarios that you will interpret in the consecutive mode, which is simply, that simply means that each scenario has fewer utterances. However, I found that some utterances were longer compared to the CCHI test and there were more medical terms, cultural references, and colloquial language involved. There are also two sight translation passages from English only and there are no simultaneous or translation components. You get 60 minutes for each test and the cost is $275. After the exam, CCHI can take up to eight weeks to score your test and the NBCMI can take up to 10 weeks. The grand total for the certification process is $485, and by the way, I didn't include this in the total because it's optional, but after you pass your test, you can order your badge. The CCHI badge costs $28 and CMI badge costs $35 and both include a lanyard and free shipping within the U.S. and they're printed on hard plastic similar to a driver's license. The CHI certification has to be renewed every four years and the CMI certification has to be renewed every five years. CCHI requires 32 hours of continuing education and the NBCMI requires 30 and the renewal costs $300. As you can see after comparing the certifications, both have pros and cons. CCHI's registration is more flexible, but their scheduling and testing options are not. NBCMI has stricter registration requirements, but more flexible testing options and deadlines to schedule tests or renew your credential. So in my case, while I do think that both are equally essential assets to the interpreting community, my experience with the NBCMI was better because I already had all the documents required to register, so that wasn't a problem for me and living in a remote location at the time, I was able to test from home. Bottom line is you can't go wrong with either one you choose and you have to take into consideration things like your language of expertise, where you live, timing restrictions, and other individual factors. If you feel this video offers value to the interpreting community, consider clicking the like button to help promote it and subscribe to find out when new videos are uploaded. I hope this comparison has been helpful to you and let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment. Thank you so much for watching. Bye-bye.