La interpretación en los servicios sanitarios en España. Estudio de la asimetría en las consultas médicas con paciente de habla extranjera y la repercusión de la presencia de un intérprete ocasional

Abstract

This work presents a study on the asymmetry of doctor-patient conversations in situations where the patient speaks a foreign language, both alone and with the aid of an occasional interpreter, in order to determine the variations which occur when compared to consultations where the healthcare staff and patient share the same native language. The study merges two disciplines of multidisciplinary origin: Discourse Analysis and Translation and Interpreting Studies. Firstly, a study of the language and different resources that speakers in an institutional context use, and secondly, a study of the role carried out by the third participant who acts as the liaison or interpreter between the other two participants (user and service provider) in the interaction are developed. The research hypothesis can be stated in the following points: 1. Considering that all doctor-patient meetings are asymmetrical, the fact that the latter is not fluent, or has difficulty with the language used in the interaction, therefore considerable increases this asymmetry. 2. By comparing interactions where the patient and doctor share the same language with those in which this is not the case, traits indicating an increase in asymmetry at the lexical and participatory level can be found. 3. The intervention of a third participant would reduce the asymmetry in meetings between doctors and patients where the latter do not share the native language of the doctor. In order to carry out this study, a corpus of 75 conversations divided into 3 groups was used: Group 1, composed of 25 conversations in which the healthcare staff and patient share the same native language; Group 2, which has 25 conversations in which the patient speaks a foreign language, and Group 3, where, in addition to a foreign patient, there is an occasional interpreter intervening. A qualitative analysis of the indicators or signs of asymmetry at the lexical and participatory level has been carried out, followed by a quantitative analysis comparing the findings of these indicators in conversations between the healthcare staff and patient who share the same native language, with foreign-speaking patients and with interactions where an occasional interpreter intervenes.