URMC holds Deaf Strong Hospital event

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — The University of Rochester held its annual Deaf Strong Hospital event Friday.

The goal is to educate first year medical students about what deaf individuals, people with hearing loss, or any people who don’t speak English go through when navigating health care systems.

They staff the hospital with members of the deaf community and have hearing individuals with limited to no knowledge of sign language try and get through a mock appointment.

“You’re not able to speak, or you don’t have someone to translate for you, whether that’s in ASL or any different language or under any different circumstance, your experience will be a lot more difficult,” student Maya Khurana said. “So it warrants an extreme amount of empathy and compassion because the system was not necessarily made for people without access to being able to speak, so definitely extremely to empathize and yourself in their shoes.”

URMC’s National Center for Deaf Health Research was created and founded to better understand health inequities in the deaf and hard of hearing population.

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