Cultivating Certification

Clarence "Buck" Chaffee
Founding Principal/CEO
Atvantus, LLC

When Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI) asked me to draft a series of articles to explain the process through which CCHI would create a high-quality national certification program for the profession, my first inclination was to provide the typical testing industry jargon about validity, reliability, defensibility, and accreditation and so on. These standards are absolutely critical for a viable certification program and CCHI certainly and appropriately expected us to use our testing expertise to produce results that meet all of these standards when they hired us. However, these terms and standards really do not tell the story of how you create a program that is appropriate and fair and will be endorsed by industry stakeholders.

I realized that the challenge here is to provide insight into the how and why the various steps of the certification development process are undertaken and the real, meaningful results that we seek through these processes. So, rather than the traditional psychometric procedural report, this article and the ones to follow will tell the story of how you go about building an appropriate, effective certification program for the healthcare interpreters’ profession – and how CCHI will ensure that the program is of the high quality that the profession deserves and the public so desperately needs.

Start at the roots

The story of certification begins at the bottom - at the roots. Because without a solid, healthy, root system you cannot grow a program that will be strong and robust and able to withstand the forces that will attempt to overturn it in the future. To do so, the roots of certification must be borne in a thorough and accurate definition of the profession as it exists today.

There are several key words in the previous sentence. First is "thorough." We must understand and document the entire breadth of the profession – everything that people are doing under the umbrella of the healthcare interpreter profession, including where and how they are providing these services. The next word is "accurate." We have to be honest in describing the profession as it actually exists. We cannot see the profession through rose-colored glasses of what some may want it to be. And the last key word is "today." We must describe the profession as it exists today without inserting hopes or aspirations for what the profession should or could be like in the future.

Okay, so you get the point that we grow the roots of certification through a scientific definition of the profession - which admittedly has a certain coldness about it. This is not to say that there should not be enthusiasm and aspirations for the profession and what it can be – that is the only way the profession will grow and thrive. Nor is it to say that certification will not aid in the profession’s growth and development, because it certainly will. It is just to say that these industry aspirations must remain separate and apart from the certification program which must be built on hard, cold truth if it is to succeed.

Defining a profession without bias

As much as we would like to think otherwise, people come with biases, personal motives and prejudices all of which are born out of our individual experiences. While you can and must eliminate the obvious conflicts of interest – such as excluding from the decision making process those individuals and groups who will profit financially from the outcome – you have to create a process that reduces the impact of individual biases as well to the extent possible. You do so by specifically involving representatives from the breadth of the profession and by including as many independent voices as possible.

For the definition of a profession to be truthful and without bias, it must come from the profession itself - not just an expert panel, or a focus group or industry leaders – but the entire profession. And to do that you follow a specific series of steps.

Step 1 - Engage expertise from outside of the profession

So I know what you are thinking. I just made this whole big pitch that the definition of a profession must come from the profession, and now I am saying that you begin outside of the profession – but this is not contradictory or self-serving.

It is important that a certification program have qualified, professional certification development experts leading the process. It is equally important that these experts have no vested interest in the ultimate definition of the profession.

Think about this for a minute. If the testing expertise were to come from an educational, training or testing entity that was already involved in the industry, there would be an obvious bias toward having the certification correspond to whatever they were already teaching or testing. Whether intentional or not, there would be a strong desire to validate previously conceived positions.

By seeking certification development expertise from outside the industry, you ensure that there is no previous position to be validated and you eliminate a very major potential for biased results.

Step 2 – Recruit subject matter experts from across the industry

Although the ultimate definition of the profession must come from the entire profession, you have to begin the process with a panel of experts. This panel however is not composed of industry thought leaders but rather of actual practitioners who represent a true cross-section of the industry.

To do so, you gather as much information as possible about the demographic makeup of the profession and then you seek out individuals whose backgrounds reflect that demographic composition. By ensuring that panel includes representation of each demographic segment of the industry, you ensure that you receive input from every segment of the profession.

The concept of demographic representation is extremely important and one that will permeate the entire process. You make sure that you include the entire profession in the process – not just the major groups.

Where we are today

CCHI has completed Step 1 and is in the process of completing Step 2. Rather than laying out the entire process in one article, I will keep you informed of the steps and their meaning as the process unfolds in future articles.

There is much more to come about how the CCHI certification will be built and about some very interesting and innovative research being done to support education and training of healthcare interpreters as well. Please check back for monthly updates.