Investigating Expressions of Pain and Emotion in Authentic Interpreted Medical Consultations

Abstract

This descriptive study, which is based on a PhD research conducted at the University of Zurich and at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, explores the activity of interpreters. At first sight, the interactions between patients and doctors seem to be fluently and smoothly interpreted. Yet, a closer look at the transcripts of the consultations reveals various conversational difficulties. A striking issue in this data set are the patients' complaints about pain and anxieties which do not always reach the doctors or the nurses, because the interpreters cut out affective parts in their renditions. In such cases, the patients' concerns may simply be lost which prevents doctors or nurses from responding on the emotional level. In other situations, however, the doctors or the nurses miss the opportunity to address the patients' feelings, even if the interpreters convey the patients' concerns to them.

The Empathic Communication Analytical Framework (ECAF): A multimodal perspective on emotional communication in interpreter-mediated consultations

“…The results that emerged from performing such a multimodal analysis of an instance of EC by means of the ECAF framework seem promising. Similarly, to the findings of previous studies (Hofer, 2020;Krystallidou et al, 2020;, we identified that the interpreter's verbal rendition of the patient's emotion EO and the doctor's verbal empathic response to that EO might be insufficiently attuned to the patient's verbally expressed empathic opportunity in the context of EC (see section 3.1).…”

“…These results seem to confirm that the context of EC might be compromised in IMCs by the interpreter and doctor's verbal actions (Hofer, 2020;Krystallidou et al, 2020;Theys et al, 2020). But they also appear to show that the patient's actions might have a similar effect on the co-construction of EC.…”

“…To date, only two studies have focused on the context of EC in IMCs and studied the verbal and nonverbal aspects of the interaction (Hofer, 2020;Lan, 2019). They concluded that interpreters' verbal and nonverbal actions might limit patients' ability to participate in the empathic interaction (Hofer, 2020) and might be perceived as more or less empathic by the other participants (e.g., more empathic: direct gaze; less empathic: averted gaze or body orientation) (Lan, 2019). However, these studies did not link participants' actions to their awareness of their own and each other's ongoing (inter)actions.…”

impact of context on community interpreting research, practice & training

“…More concretely, they resort to purposeful sampling of interpreter-mediated interactions according to the (most common) language combinations in gynaecology, endocrinology, cardiology, rheumatology and otolaryngology in a Belgian hospital and video recorded them. The researchers claim that, to date, only two studies have focused on the context of EC (empathic communication) in IMCs (interpreter-mediated consultations) and studied the verbal and non-verbal aspects of the interaction (Hofer, 2020;Lan, 2019;our emphasis). It is precisely the combination of verbal and non-verbal actions that might compromise participation in empathic interaction, hence the importance of video recordings to observe embodied communication.…”

The co-construction of empathic communication in interpreter-mediated medical consultations: A qualitative analysis of interaction

“…Most studies focused on the amount or intensity of EC in IMCs and did not investigate the interactional processes during which doctors and patients co-construct EC with the help of the interpreter (Theys et al, 2020;Valero-Garcés & Peñalver, 2021). To date, to the best of our knowledge, only six studies adopted such an interactional approach (Gutierrez et al, 2019;Hofer, 2020;Krystallidou et al, 2020;Krystallidou, Remael, et al, 2018;Lan, 2019;Thompson et al, 2021). They showed that interpreters struggle to render doctors and patients' messages accurately during EC (Gutierrez et al, 2019;Hofer, 2020;Krystallidou et al, 2020;Krystallidou, Remael, et al, 2018;Lan, 2019), while doctors might fail to recognize patients' experiences during the empathic interaction in IMCs (Hofer, 2020;Krystallidou et al, 2020;Krystallidou, Remael, et al, 2018).…”