Vital Signs LLC

Joyce Dworsky (now Dworsky-Srour) established Vital Signs LLC in 1987. Prior to becoming the founding owner, Joyce worked the midnight shift for eleven years, with other medical professionals, at a local university health center. Living in the Washington, DC area, Joyce discovered many opportunities to pursue her interest in learning sign language. While still working nights at the health center and taking ASL classes during the day, Joyce also taught CPR classes for the American Red Cross. When her supervisors discovered she was learning to sign, they sent her to Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University) to teach deaf students how to save lives. Luckily for Joyce, teaching CPR is very visual and tactile, so with the help of mannequin dolls and a captioned video, she trained and certified the Gallaudet students. Two days later, after the CPR course at Gallaudet, Joyce received a phone call from Deaf Pride, the primary organization in DC that worked with the Deaf community and sign language interpreters. A student at Gallaudet, who had been in the recent CPR class, requested that Joyce interpret an up-coming meeting. On that day, an interpreter was born! Joyce became an interpreter in the early 1980's when there was a dearth of interpreters and few formal opportunities for training. She was accepted into the Gallaudet Interpreter Consortium and followed the path that was laid out in front of her. Eventually, she became certified through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID). Over the years, Joyce took on additional assignments, many in the medical world, and ultimately was asked to bid on a government contract for interpreter services. At that point, she formally established Vital Signs LLC.