For many people, figuring out what career path to choose in life is very difficult. Over the past years, my desired career path has changed many times. I started out with an Associate Degree in Medical Assisting at City College of San Francisco in 2015. In the second semester, I undertook my internship program at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Office for a period of seven weeks and worked in Phlebotomy at CPMC hospital in San Francisco. During the internship program, I was able to gain a lot of experience in medical assisting as well as in medical interpretation. The program gave me a chance to interact with more people with different medical problems and assist them in terms of interpretation so that they could understand their problems properly.

One of the profound reasons why I choose medical interpreter as my career probably started when I became an ad-hoc interpreter for my father during his doctor visits. When I first came to the United States, I spoke just a few words of English but was determined to learn the language. After a few years of hard work, I gained enough knowledge to help my parents with interpretation for most of the cases in life and for their medical situations. As my father was diagnosed with a bad health condition, I was his voice through all the testing and medical appointments until I saw myself as part of the wonderful work that Medical Interpreters do, and my dream from that moment was to become a Vietnamese Healthcare Interpreter.