The purpose of the CoreCHI-Performance™ (CoreCHI-P™) certification is to offer healthcare interpreters of any language a valid national professional standard that assesses their core professional knowledge and cognitive interpreting skills needed to perform the duties of the healthcare interpreter. This monolingual performance certification is available for interpreters of any language*. This program is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA); accreditation is valid November 2024 – November 2029. The CoreCHI-P™ credential also requires certificants to meet CCHI’s Language Proficiency for Interpreters eligibility requirements.
Interpreters seeking the CoreCHI-P certification must pass two exams – the CoreCHI™ professional knowledge exam (click here for the CoreCHI exam description) and the monolingual performance ETOE™ (English-to-English) exam (click here to watch a webinar recording about the exam).
The ETOE™ Exam has been developed based on the results of the EtoE Interpreter Testing Study and the 2022 Job Task Analysis Study, which includes a national survey of practicing interpreters and validation by a panel of subject-matter experts, who are practicing interpreters (see all JTA reports on the Publications page).
All CoreCHI certificants qualify to take the ETOE™ exam and earn the CoreCHI-P™ certification. At this time, transitioning to the CoreCHI-P™ certification is voluntary. Starting in 2025, this transition will become mandatory, and the CoreCHI certificants will have to earn the CoreCHI-P™ certification within 2 years.
CCHI strongly encourages all CoreCHI certificants to take the ETOE™ exam as soon as possible.
See more information about the CoreCHI-P™ credential in these PowerPoint slides.
The full text of the current ETOE™ Exam Specifications is available here.
The PowerPoint slides about the ETOE™ Exam Interface are available here.
The free ETOE™ Practice Exam can be accessed here (the Practice Exam is optional; your performance on the Practice Exam is not predictive of your performance on the actual exam).
* Interpreters of Arabic, Mandarin or Spanish may earn this certification only after they have earned their respective CHI credential. All CHI certificants must maintain their CHI certification active, regardless of whether they also have a CoreCHI-P certification. Candidates who failed a bilingual CHI exam are not eligible for the CoreCHI-P certification credential.
ASL interpreters are required to be certified by RID/CASLI or BEI, because these organizations offer general performance certification exams assessing ASL/English interpreting skills. CCHI recognizes the value of the existing certifications for ASL interpreters. The CoreCHI-P credential is a specialty certification for ASL interpreters, demonstrating their readiness to interpret in healthcare settings. ASL interpreters who are not certified by either RID/CASLI or BEI are not eligible for the CoreCHI-P credential.
The ETOE™ examination is time-limited and is 60 minutes long. It is administered in a private room at a test center. Before the examination is launched, candidates perform an audio check to ensure that their headset is working and audio is recorded properly. Candidates have 15 minutes to read the directions and complete a brief tutorial in order to familiarize themselves with the exam interface. This preparatory time is not counted towards the examination time. After the actual exam is launched, the count-down timer located in the top left-hand corner of the screen will show the candidate how many minutes are left.
This medical interpreter monolingual ETOE™ performance exam consists of the following sections that assess various interpreting cognitive skills:
- Listening Comprehension (14%) – one (1) audio item where candidates listen to a speech in English (between 150-170 words long) and need to restate in their own words in English all the KEY points the speaker makes, providing the necessary context for these key points. In other words, the expectation is the response would represent a cohesive speech, not enumeration of bullet points only. Candidates can listen to this item up to 2 times before recording their response.
- Shadowing (13%) – one (1) audio item, between 170-220 words long, where candidates need to REPEAT simultaneously in English what they hear. This item can be played only once, and a response must be provided at the same time as listening to the speech (not after).
- Memory Capacity (24%) – eight (8) audio items, each containing a short utterance (between 12-35 words); candidates can listen to an item only once and then need to repeat everything EXACTLY as they hear it, without changing, omitting, or adding, any words.
- Restate the Meaning (21%) – seven (7) audio items, each containing a short utterance (up to 35 words); candidates can listen to an item up to 2 times and then need to re-state (paraphrase) the message in English using their own words and to keep the same meaning of the entire message.
- Equivalence of Meaning (19%) – four (4) text items, each between 30-40 words long with five (5) medical terms underlined; candidates read the passage and then need to rephrase (re-state) the entire passage in English using their own words. They MUST find alternatives for the underlined terms. Words that are not underlined may be changed or kept the same as necessary to maintain the meaning of the original text.
- Reading Comprehension (9%) – one (1) text, between 170-220 words long, with three (3) questions based on it; candidates read the text and then record their responses to the three questions. They have 3 minutes to record all the responses.
- Speaking Skills in the Language Other Than English – one (1) unscored item; candidates need to describe the image in their NON-English language (the language of the patients for whom they interpret). The goal is to show how well they speak their working language. Candidate responses to this item will be used in continuing education activities that would be required of the CoreCHI-P certificants. Special note for ASL interpreters: Because there exist ASL performance certification exams (by CASLI/RID, BEI), CCHI has verified your language proficiency in ASL through the eligibility requirement to be certified by RID/CASLI or BEI. Thus, for this item, you will be describing the picture in English. Your recordings will be utilized by CCHI in developing continuing education activities.
The on-screen directions are provided before each item. Candidates are provided with paper and pencil so they can take notes as they would on the job. The notes are collected by the proctor at the end of the exam and shredded. The candidate will listen to the audio recordings of Sections 1-4 and will record their oral responses via a headset connected to the computer. In Sections 5-6 of the test, the candidate will read onscreen the English texts and record their oral responses. In the last section of the test, the candidate will be presented with an image and will record their descriptions of it in the non-English language.
This is a forward-only exam, i.e., candidates cannot go back and cannot review (listen t0) the recording of the their responses.
Candidates’ responses are captured in real time on our testing vendor’s servers. After 60 minutes pass, the test is submitted automatically with all responses saved even if the candidate did not complete the whole exam.
Candidates are not allowed to take any breaks or leave the testing room during the exam. (A bathroom break may be granted only if pre-approved as an ADA accommodation and for test-center delivered exams only.) Non-compliance with this requirement will result in immediate exam terminations, filing an incident report by the proctor, and a possible disciplinary action.
The score for the ETOE™ examination is emailed to the candidate within 6-8 weeks after the last date of the corresponding testing window (i.e., when all testing is done, not after a candidate’s specific test date).
The ETOE™ examination is administered only during certain testing “windows” each quarter, and delivered in a secure proctored test center environment in the U.S. Candidates are monitored and video-recorded during the entire testing process. The current ETOE™ testing schedule is listed at http://cchicertification.org/certifications/scheduling/.
If the candidate experiences any issues (including technical issues) during the testing that were not resolved at the test center AND that they feel will affect the outcome of the exam, the candidate must notify the proctor before they leave the test center and ask the proctor to file an issue report with CCHI. The candidate must ALSO contact CCHI separately at info@CCHIcertification.org within 24 hours of taking their exam to report any issue(s). All communication with CCHI about testing experience must be in writing.
CCHI updates the exam content domains and weightings based on the job task analysis study which is conducted every 6-7 years. Candidates will be informed in advance of any changes to the exam content domains and/or weightings.