Medical Interpreting in Taiwan: Physicians’ Perspective

• Main Authors: Chou, Yen-Fu, 周彥甫
• Other Authors: Chen, Tze-Wei
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/855y2q

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 翻譯研究所 === 107 === 　　Physicians have to address the language barrier when meeting foreign patients with limited language proficiency, and there is a great abundance of literature on strategies for bridging language and cultural gaps between physicians and patients. Among the strategies, medical interpreting is a principal research topic. There is little research, however, on the language barrier and medical interpreting in Taiwan’s healthcare settings. 　　Using the mixed methods design—that is, a questionnaire survey complemented by follow-up interviews, the researcher attempted to explore how Taiwan’s physicians addressed the language barrier in the context of meeting a foreign patient with limited Mandarin proficiency. Their attitudes toward the characteristics of the medical interpreter were examined as well. The findings suggested that the participants appeared to try speaking English first, instead of using the interpreting service, in the context of communicating with foreign patients with limited Mandarin proficiency. Although the physicians appeared to share a common belief that English can serve as a lingua franca in communication with foreign patients, such an idea may not necessarily work in all clinical contexts. Besides, the results also indicated that the participants were likely to refrain from employing the interpreting assistance because of their common presupposition about the medical interpreter that the interpreter in the medical context is always the agent. Such presupposition, as well as the physicians’ mistrust toward the agent, might inevitably lead to their mistrust toward the medical interpreter and consequently decrease the utilization of the interpreting service. 　　Another remarkable finding was that there was no significant positive effect of the interpreting assistance on the quality of doctor-patient communication according to the quantitative data. Using the qualitative data collected by the interview, the researcher argued that the physicians were likely to develop doubt about the quality of interpretation when seeing the interpreting service being conducted by an unprofessional, unreliable way by the interpreter. As a result, concern about the poor quality of communication would possibly emerge based on the suspicious interpretation, leading to unsatisfying quality of care. From this critical finding, the study highlighted the value of developing professional medical interpreting service. 　　To conclude, this study had important implications for the development of professional medical interpreting and the new immigrants’ health care as well in Taiwan.