As the profession of health care interpreting in the United States matures and evolves, the importance of creating shared understandings of what is considered high quality and ethically appropriate principles and practices in the field becomes imperative. To this end, the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care identified three steps that needed to take place on a national level in order to standardize the expectations that the health care industry and patients should have of interpreters and to raise the quality of health care interpreting. The first step was to create and build support for a single Code of Ethics that would guide the practice of interpreters working in health care venues. The second step was to develop a nationally accepted, unified set of Standards of Practice based on the Code of Ethics that would define competent practice in the field. The third step was to create a national certification process that would set a standard for qualification as a professional health care interpreter. (NCIHC, 2004)