The rural hospital in Colombia where Dr. Ericka Olivera worked was so poor that patients often had to bring their own medical supplies. There was no x-ray machine or CT scanner. Sometimes, she recalls, “there wasn’t enough gas for the ambulance to bring a patient to a larger hospital.”
Olivera delivered babies, treated burns and stab wounds, arthritis and heart attacks, asthma and high blood pressure. She taught patients how to control chronic diseases.
Through the Rhode Island Welcome Back program at Dorcas Place Adult and Family Learning Center, Olivera is applying that breadth of experience, as well as her language skills and cultural background, as she works toward medical licensure in the United States.
“When I came here, I had a very low level of English. I had a tutor,” Olivera said. “When my English improved, I decided to get back to my career, but I didn’t know who could help me.”
A friend directed Olivera to the Rhode Island Welcome Back Center in Providence, a statewide initiative that helps underemployed, foreign-trained doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals get licensed and back to work in the U.S. health system.
Modeled after the original Welcome Back Center in San Francisco and one of eight such centers nationwide, the program assists with everything from English proficiency and acculturation to clinical experience, internship opportunities, work-force readiness training and a host of other supports.
Adding these foreign-trained professionals to the mix helps people otherwise stymied by language and cultural barriers to access health care. The program simultaneously aims to fill in work-force shortages in key related areas.
The Welcome Back initiative as a whole was honored in Washington, D.C., in May. Director Manuela Raposo represented the Rhode Island center.
“It’s really hard, you know, to start from zero,” said Olivera. “You have to study all that you did at the university [in Colombia]. This is a very hard, demanding career.”
The center encouraged her “not only not to give up and to get my medical license, but they gave me orientation, they gave me guidance. They provided books for me to study, and study partners,” and financial aid for exam fees. They also placed her in an “observership” at Clínica Esperanza, a free clinic in Olneyville, with which the center partners.
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