Guideline Questions
1. What is you position at Sea Mar?
2. How long have you worked here?
3. Do you enjoy your work? In what way?
4. Do you find it rewarding?
5. Is there anything you dislike about your work and how so?
6. What kinds of problems might you have in your position?
7. Do you speak Spanish? Where/when did you learn?
8. What type of people commonly come to Sea Mar?
9. Is your work relationship with the formal? Informal?

Interview #1, Sea Mar Clinic
Interviewee: Sandra Aramburu
Job Description: Health Educator

Questions/Responses (Paraphrased)

Q. What is you position here at Sea Mar?
A. Health Educator

Q. What’s involved in being a health educator?
A. A health educator takes referrals from the doctors and then inform the patients of their options, addressing his/her questions and concerns about the doctors’ diagnosis. In other words, a health educator acts as liaison between doctor and patient, referring the patient to the treatment suggested by the doctor.

Q. How long have you worked at Sea Mar?
A. Eight months, beginning in January (2002). However, I started out as a dietician and have been a health educator for about a month.

Q. Did you require any additional training to become a health educator?
A. No.

Q. Do you enjoy your work? Do you find it rewarding?
A. I do, I like to teach and inform people and so that they can make healthy changes so that they can have a better life, if they choose to do so. That gives me a lot of satisfaction.

Q. Is there anything in particular you dislike about your work?
A. There’s a lot of paper work involved. We are a community clinic, so we have to account for everything. But I really like the one-on-one contact. Sometimes we go out into the community.

Q. Do you speak Spanish? Did you learn it on the job?
A. Yes, but I did not learn it on the job. I am of Mexican descent, so I have been bilingual all of my life. I manage both languages very well.

Q. Does this come in handy when talking with the patients?
A. Very, because most of our patients here are . . . Spanish speaking only. They don’t always understand what the doctor tells them, even though the doctor speaks some Spanish.

Q. What kind of people do you get here? I understand that there are a lot of people of Mexican or Latino descent.
A. We do. I don’t know the statistics exactly, but it looks to me like maybe 60 percent are Hispanic and 40 percent are Caucasian or other race. We have some Asians, some Croatians. Most of the Hispanics are new comers to the country, they’re not very well established, low income.

Q. Is that part of the job description, having some acquaintance with Spanish?
A. It is, a lot of the jobs are bilingual preferred or Spanish speaking preferred.

Q. Of the people who come here, is it mostly women, or men, or a particular age category?
A. They are families, there really is no age. They tend to be young families. People tend to be middle age. A lot of pregnant women. Very typical of a community clinic.

Q. I never noticed how large of a Hispanic population lives in Washington. Do you have any explanation for this?
A.Where do you live? *In Sultan, east of Monroe.* You probably see more here in Marysville because there’s a larger farming community here. Like up north, around Mt. Vernon there are a lot of farming communities.

Q. Have you had any particular problems with your job, something you’ve had trouble with? A communication barrier?
A.Yes, sometimes the patients, they don’t want to talk with me, they want to hear directly from the doctor. They may be angry and don’t want to hear it from me, regardless of race. They feel the doctor is the only credible person to tell them the problem.

Q. What kind of relationship do you have with the doctors?
A. Very good. They seem to trust me as a qualified professional, and I can ask them questions. They are very approachable. I no longer have the fear of doctors I once had. It is informal.

Q. What other people do you work with?
A.The nurses, the dietician, the people in the maternity wing, and the front receptionists.

Interview #2, Sea Mar Clinic
Interviewee: Jeanne Michaud
Job Description: Utilization Management Coordinator

Questions/Responses (Paraphrased)

Q. What do you do here?
A. I’m the Utilization Management Coordinator, but I call myself the referral coordinator.

Q. And what does it mean?
A. It means that I receive requests from the doctor for the patient to see a specialist, and confirm that we have done everything right here before we send the patient to the specialist. I also check the insurance of the patients and coordinate with other facilities to obtain the proper paperwork.

Q. How long have you worked here?
A. About a year and a half.

Q. What do you enjoy about your work?
A. I’m my own boss, and as long as I do my job, they leave me alone. My work’s also diversified.

Q. How much work do you do with the other staff?
A. Quite a bit. I work with Medical Records, the MA’s (medical assistant), the Health Educator, the front desk, and the physicians themselves.

Q. So there’s quite a bit of interaction? Especially with Medical Records?
A. Yes, I depend on them a lot for paperwork (charts) I need.

Q. I understand that patient confidentiality is a big issue in the Medical Records department.
A. There is always an issue of confidentiality in any medical facility. I had to sign a contract to maintain patient confidentiality. Signed record release forms are required to transfer documents between facilities.

Q. Does that prove to be a problem when you get charts and records?
A. No, most of my chart requests are already written and we all have signed contracts of confidentiality, so if I ask for a chart, it’s assumed that I’m supposed to have it.

Q. How is your working relationship with the other staff? Is it formal or informal?
A. I think it’s very good; it’s formal to informal. It’s friendly but professional.

Q. How do you define professional? What kind of actions go along with it?
A. No horseplay, confidentiality, concern for the patients, but restraint. You understand and perform your job, and you correct your mistakes.

Q. How much do you actually interact with the patients?
A. Not a lot, maybe 10%. Sometimes I talk to them on the phone about insurance or whatever. I may be the patients’ liaison between their insurance providers.

Q. Has there been any particular problems with your job?
A. The new program we got into a while ago, it required us change our system a bit. There were some problems. There was also a computer problem. When we moved to this new facility, I lost my connection to the Community Health Plan of Washington. Now I have to call the information in, but it’s alright now; I’ve adapted.

Q. Aside from the computer problem, is there anything about your job you really dislike?
A. No, I don’t think so. If I did, I’d try to fix it. My age and experience helps. I would like better insurance benefits here.