By MATTHEW PARRY
The Provo Fire Department wants to help serve the growing Latino community in Provo, so the department is sponsoring classes teaching paramedics basic Spanish, said Jim Guynn, Provo fire investigator.
Rifling through files of recent victims, Guynn showed that many of the people in emergencies were native Spanish-speakers.
“I did a lot of inspections at the various schools this year,” Guynn said. “The number of Latino surnames at those schools are mind-boggling.”
Since 1990, the Latino population has grown in Provo by 69 percent, according to the 1999 Lester Study.
To meet the needs of the growing Spanish-speaking population, the Provo Fire Department conducted an unprecedented class for two weeks in the middle of January, Guynn said.
The goal of the class is to help paramedics communicate medical terms with Spanish speakers, Guynn said.
“Of 75 people in the department, we have eight people who are functionally bilingual,” Guynn said. “We need to overcome our foreign language barrier and provide service in their language.”
Under mandate by Provo City, the fire department is supposed to serve in such a way that people understand, Guynn said.
“We have determined that understanding means that we should learn Spanish and help serve those people,” Guynn said.
The fire department is using a program called “Spanish for Emergency Medical Care Providers” by the Partners in Training Consultants in Tucson, Ariz.
The class taught by Guynn is divided into two eight-hour sessions.
The first session teaches the alphabet, proper pronunciation, how to write names one letter at a time and basic phrases.
“We then focus on assessment questions like: do you have chest pains?” Guynn said. “These questions usually solicit one or two word responses like s? or no.”
The second session reviewed the first day of training by doing role-plays. The fluent Spanish-speaking firefighters played the role of the victims while the others attempted to use their new language ability, Guynn said.
“Some didn’t pick it up,” Guynn said. “However, nobody got discouraged because it was a friendly environment. We all laughed with each other when we made mistakes.”
Fire engineer Vincent Kay struggled to understand the language when he took the class.
“I’m not very good at speaking Spanish. I’ve tried to use it and failed,” Kay said. “However, I thought it was a good class that gave us a base to start with.”
Marty Kerbo, a paramedic firefighter, found the class to be useful.
“On a seizure call, I was able to use it,” he said. “It involved a family that spoke Spanish. We could communicate and speak face-to-face to the individual.”
Joe Hamilton, a paramedic firefighter, taught himself Spanish when he was with the Los Angeles Police Department and played the role of the victim during the class.
“It was good being the victim because it actually helped my vocabulary a lot,” he said. “A Latino woman fell on her arm and it was bleeding. When I came to help her, I could use that vocabulary I had just learned in the class.”
Now that the fire department has introduced its initial training, the department plans to do a mininum of two class hours each month, Guynn said.
“The guys are out there practicing Spanish all the time,” Guynn said. “They aren’t meant to be fluent, but they can communicate to victims in cave-man Spanish at least.”
