IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v64y2007i4p924-937.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interpreters as co-diagnosticians: Overlapping roles and services between providers and interpreters

Author

Listed:
  • Hsieh, Elaine

Abstract

This study examined medical interpreters' practice of the co-diagnostician role and further explored its practical, institutional, and ethical implications. Twenty-six professional interpreters (of 17 languages), 4 patients, and 12 health-care providers were recruited for this study, which involves participant observation and interviews undertaken in the Midwestern US. Constant comparative analysis was used to develop themes of interpreters' communicative practices. Interpreters justified their role performances by claiming the identity of a member of the health care team and their work as part of the team effort. Their communicative strategies as a co-diagnostician reflect their preconception of the social hierarchy of health-care settings and the emphasis on diagnostic efficacy. I have identified five strategies for the co-diagnostician role. These were assuming the provider's communicative goals; editorializing information for medical emphasis; initiating information-seeking behaviors; participating in diagnostic tasks; and volunteering medical information to the patients. Although many strategies can be attributed to interpreters' effort to conserve providers' time and to bridge the cultural differences, they also pose risks to patients' privacy, clinical consequences, and provider-patient relationships.

Suggested Citation

  • Hsieh, Elaine, 2007. "Interpreters as co-diagnosticians: Overlapping roles and services between providers and interpreters," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 924-937, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:64:y:2007:i:4:p:924-937
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(06)00537-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hsieh, Elaine, 2006. "Conflicts in how interpreters manage their roles in provider-patient interactions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 721-730, February.
    2. Kaufert, Joseph M. & Koolage, William W., 1984. "Role conflict among 'culture brokers': The experience of native Canadian medical interpreters," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 283-286, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seale, Clive & Rivas, Carol & Al-Sarraj, Hela & Webb, Sarah & Kelly, Moira, 2013. "Moral mediation in interpreted health care consultations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 141-148.
    2. Álvaro Aranda, Cristina & Gutiérrez, Raquel Lázaro & Li, Shuangyu, 2021. "Towards a collaborative structure of interpreter-mediated medical consultations: Complementing functions between healthcare interpreters and providers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    3. Bell, Susan E., 2019. "Interpreter assemblages: Caring for immigrant and refugee patients in US hospitals," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 29-36.
    4. Deumert, Ana, 2010. "'It would be nice if they could give us more language' - Serving South Africa's multilingual patient base," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 53-61, July.
    5. Wei, Wan, 2024. "Beyond the patient-doctor dyad: Examining “other” patient engagement in Traditional Chinese Medicine consultations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 340(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark W. Rosenberg & Kathi Wilson & Sylvia Abonyi & Adam Wiebe & Kelsey Beach & Robert Lovelace, 2009. "Older Aboriginal Peoples in Canada – Demographics, Health Status and Access to Health Care," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 249, McMaster University.
    2. Kilian, Sanja & Swartz, Leslie & Dowling, Tessa & Dlali, Mawande & Chiliza, Bonginkosi, 2014. "The potential consequences of informal interpreting practices for assessment of patients in a South African psychiatric hospital," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 159-167.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:64:y:2007:i:4:p:924-937. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.