On Monday 28th April 2025, SIS Projects & Quality Assurance Manager Vikki Gimson and Learning & Development Manager Rosie Minako represented SIS by attending a lecture for Master’s students on the Health Care Leadership and Commissioning Course at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The teaching topic was Health Inequalities as part of the module on Quality, Safety and Service Improvement in Clinical Services. Vikki gave a presentation on the importance of working with interpreters in the medical sector, and why it is important to use trained interpreters.
Rosie, who is newly appointed, joined Vikki to deliver a case study workshop with the master students based on a story presented by SIS Service Users at the AGM 2024. The medical students were very engaging during the discussion, and they also asked many interesting questions.
‘I wanted to thank you all SO much for your contribution to teaching on Monday. It was I think quite an eye opener for the students, which is the whole object of the work – prompting them to think more widely about the subject of quality and safety, through that health inequalities lens.’ – Jane Lodge, Assistant Professor of the MSc
A couple of students mentioned at the start of the next day’s teaching how the session SIS attended had made them think about how important it is to use trained interpreters – not staff members or family.
Given the Brighton and Sussex Medical School has a wide a range of students across primary care, acute, mental health, community and care homes, the session has offered them a lot of scope for education, change and improvement.
At the end of the session, we handed out translated self-referral cards for students to distribute to Service Users and have also reached out to potential new linguists. SIS is incredibly proud to have been invited to take part in the event, providing an opportunity to educate the younger generation in the community and to share with our future medical staff a little about our work providing language support at the heart of our community.
