Doctors and patients rely on verbal and nonverbal resources to co-construct clinical empathy. In language-discordant consultations, interpreters’ communicative actions might compromise this process. ...We aim to explore doctors, patients, and professional interpreters’ perspectives on their own and others’ actions during their empathic interaction in interpreter-mediated consultations (IMCs). We analyzed 20 video stimulated recall interviews with doctors, patients, and interpreters using qualitative content analysis. Doctors and patients found ways to connect with each other on the level of empathic communication (EC) that is not limited by interpreters’ alterations or disengaged demeanor. Some aspects of doctors and interpreters’ professional practices might jeopardize the co-construction of EC in IMCs. The co-construction of EC in IMCs is not only subject to participants’ communicative (inter)actions, but also to organizational and subjective factors. These results provide evidence of the transactional process between the behavioral, cognitive, and affective components of clinical empathy in the context of IMCs.
Linking up with Video Salaets, Heidi; Brône, Geert
2020, 2020-01-15, Letnik:
149
eBook
This volume is intended as an innovating reader for both interpreting practitioners as well as scholars, engaging with the multifaceted question addressed in the title "Why linking up with video?".
Current interpreter training programs pay increasingly more attention to the intricacies of the clinical context, such as doctors and patients' communicative goals. However, to date, the conduit ...model remains influential when it comes to interpreters dealing with other participants' emotions and their own emotions in interpreter-mediated consultations (IMCs). Consequently, establishing a good doctor-patient relationship by means of empathic communication (EC) might be jeopardized in IMCs. During EC, patients express their emotional or illness experiences to which doctors convey their empathic understanding. This study aimed to assess how doctors, patients, and interpreters verbally co-construct EC and the interpreter's effect on this process. We analyzed 7 authentic IMCs using the Empathic Communication Coding System, as previously adapted for IMCs. We identified empathic opportunities (EOs) and empathic responses (ERs) as expressed by patients/doctors, and as rendered by interpreters. Our results showed that EC is the result of an interactive and collaborative process among all participants in IMCs. That is, the interplay between participants' communicative actions determines how patients' expressed lived experiences are addressed in IMCs. Our findings suggest that interpreters hold a central position in this process as they initiated EC about the patient's illness experience and exerted control over the ways in which statements were rendered (e.g., interpreters omitted and altered original statements). In addition, our results indicated that EC in IMCs might be compromised by doctors and interpreters' communicative actions.
This paper focuses on interpreter-mediated interviews with victims, suspects and witnesses under the age of 18 who are vulnerable because of their age, native language and country of presence, with ...particular emphasis on how to provide the necessary information, support and protection for this group. The paper reports on the results of the European project Cooperation in Interpreter-Mediated Questioning of Minors (CMIQ). As the name suggests, cooperation and teamwork among stakeholders are of paramount importance in interpreter-mediated questioning of minors (ImQM). This contribution will focus on semi-structured interviews conducted by Belgian researchers with twelve Flemish children, boys and girls aged five to 17, of which 11 were hearing and one was deaf. Based on the outcomes of twelve semi-structured interviews with minors, results point to specific perceptions of the interpreter reported by children: the interpreter seems to be the person they turn to when speaking and the person they trust most. Since codes of ethics prescribe, among other things, neutrality and often even 'invisibility' on the part of the interpreter, reflection on this topic is necessary. Based on the paramount importance of rapport-building with the child, this paper argues that the role of interpreters should be discussed not only during a briefing, but also in joint interprofessional training. In this way, all stakeholders improve their knowledge of their respective professional roles in ImQM situations, which helps to further tackle contradictory expectations with regard to the role of the interpreter.
In recent decades, test design, assessment and evaluation procedures have received much attention and have focused on concepts such as quality, validity and reliability. Obviously this is also true ...for the highly complex testing of interpreters’ skills, including legal interpreting. In this paper, we will first discuss the significant changes that have been made in the final examination procedure at the end of the LIT (Legal Interpreting and Translation) course at KULeuven, Antwerp campus, which have been complemented by an introductory workshop for the graders. It is important to mention that graders can be language experts as well as external legal experts (judges, prosecutors, police officers, lawyers, etc.) The comparison of the scores of candidates between 2008 and 2013 (a period in which different evaluation grids were used) shows a tendency towards more overall failures. In addition to this, an analysis of the graders’ comments demonstrates that results are more consistent and that graders’ comments mirror the results better. The new evaluation method clearly leaves less room for grader subjectivity, which presumably points to the fact that candidates are tested in a more transparent and reliable way. Follow-up research (in grader focus groups) and observations of the actual evaluation process will enable us to ensure that graders are comfortable with the new method and to check if they use it in a consistent way. Verifying whether the overall procedure actually produces better and more competent legal interpreters is a further important step needed to complete this research project.
•There is dearth of research on emotional communication in interpreted consultations.•Participants in interpreted consultations can co-construct emotional communication.•Interpreted consultations are ...marked by a decrease in emotional communication.•Emotional communication should be enhanced to ensure the patient’s quality of care.
To identify the ways in which physicians, patients and interpreters express emotions, react to emotional expressions and/or coordinate the emotional interaction in interpreter-mediated consultations (IMCs).
We systematically searched four databases and screened 10 307 articles. The following inclusion criteria were applied: 1) participants are patients with limited proficiency in the host language, physicians and professional interpreters, 2) analysis of patient-physician-interpreter interaction, 3) focus on emotions, 4) in vivo spoken language interpretation, and 5) authentic primary data.
The results of 7 included studies suggest that physicians, patients and interpreters work together and verbally and paraverbally contribute to the co-construction of emotional communication (EC) in IMCs. However, a decrease in EC might still compromise the patient’s quality of care in IMCs.
There is a dearth of scientific evidence of EC as an interactional process between participants in IMCs. More research on under investigated modes of communication and emotions is needed to advance our understanding. For now, EC seems to be subject to the successful interaction between participants in IMCs.
Evidence-based curricula of interprofessional education between physicians and interpreters on EC in IMCs could be beneficial to the effective co-construction of EC in IMCS.
Current interpreter training programs pay increasingly more attention to the intricacies of the clinical context, such as doctors and patients’ communicative goals. However, to date, the conduit ...model remains influential when it comes to interpreters dealing with other participants’ emotions and their own emotions in interpreter-mediated consultations (IMCs). Consequently, establishing a good doctor-patient relationship by means of empathic communication (EC) might be jeopardized in IMCs. During EC, patients express their emotional or illness experiences to which doctors convey their empathic understanding. This study aimed to assess how doctors, patients, and interpreters verbally co-construct EC and the interpreter’s effect on this process. We analyzed 7 authentic IMCs using the Empathic Communication Coding System, as previously adapted for IMCs. We identified empathic opportunities (EOs) and empathic responses (ERs) as expressed by patients/doctors, and as rendered by interpreters. Our results showed that EC is the result of an interactive and collaborative process among all participants in IMCs. That is, the interplay between participants’ communicative actions determines how patients’ expressed lived experiences are addressed in IMCs. Our findings suggest that interpreters hold a central position in this process as they initiated EC about the patient’s illness experience and exerted control over the ways in which statements were rendered (e.g., interpreters omitted and altered original statements). In addition, our results indicated that EC in IMCs might be compromised by doctors and interpreters’ communicative actions.
•Empathic communication is compromised in interpreter-mediated consultations.•Joint training between medical and interpreting students is recommended.•Protocol for the development of ...interprofessional education.•Expansion of the interprofessional education to other disciplines requires testing.
Although empathy is associated with positive health outcomes, doctors do not often express empathy and they fail to sufficiently respond to patients’ emotional statements. In linguistically diverse healthcare settings empathic communication is compromised even more. This has received little attention in medical education and even less in interpreter education. This project aims to develop an educational intervention for medical- and interpreting students on empathic communication in interpreter-mediated consultations. We rely on the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework for the development and evaluation of complex interventions (phases 0–2). The project will yield valuable insights into the communicative and interactional processes and resources doctors, patients and professional interpreters use in the expression and management of empathic communication in interpreter-mediated consultations.
Although the notion of context is omnipresent in research in interpreting studies (IS), especially in community settings, and defines the ways in which interpreting is being practised, researched and ...trained, it has not yet been recognized or defined as a topic in its own right, at least not within IS. Starting from some theoretical notions on the concept of context, this article moves on to discuss different levels of context, namely, geographical, socio-institutional and interactional. By means of examples from a variety of settings in community interpreting (CI), it shows how the different levels of context interact, and, in these ways, have an impact on CI practice, research and training.
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