Congrats to Dr. Marina Del Rios! Emergency medicine physician Marina Del Rios, MD, MS, and the Interpretation and Translation Services team have been named as recipients of the 2023 University of Iowa Health Care Culturally Responsive Health Care Award. Dr. Del Rios, associate professor of emergency medicine, was the individual honored for her advocacy and commitment to patients who do not speak English fluently and her research on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health care. Del Rios is known by her peers as a colleague consistently working to improve patient care and resident education.
“Within the department, she has been an advocate for our Spanish-speaking patients and has done an amazing job teaching our residents culturally sensitive care. Her primary efforts to date within the clinical realm have been to improve the communication between providers and patients, patiently pointing out that the use of the translator phone leaves out a lot of nonverbal communication crucial to patient wellbeing.” – nomination letter for Marina Del Rios.