Towards a Training Model for Effective Ethical Translation in Health Care Settings in Scotland

Principal Investigator: Prof Alison Phipps
Post Doctoral Research Associate: Dr Teresa Piacentini
Project Team: Dr Ima Jackson, Dr Niamh Stack, Professor Kate O’Donnell, Tanveer Parnez

The Project

Funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council/Scottish Funding Council, the project brings together a team of researchers in the School of Education and the College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow, the School of Health at Glasgow Caledonian University and BEMIS (a non-HE third sector partner).  The aim of the project is to develop a research-based, pedagogical model for effective translation in intercultural health care settings, using drama and role play.  

Project rationale

Migration has transformed both the development of health care and delivery of health care services across Europe.  Because migrants are not a homogenous population a range of variables will affect help-seeking behaviours, including migratory variables, socio-demographic factors and ethnicity.  Furthermore, the processes of migration, the migratory trajectory and the immigrant incorporation regime in a receiving country can present a wide range of different experiences of and dilemmas with accessing healthcare.  There is an acknowledged risk of misdiagnosis, medication mismanagement, delay and ineffective service delivery specifically for migrants with limited English proficiency.  There is also more recently a growing awareness of the importance of improving intercultural communication and understanding which will increase the efficacy of the consultation in the immediate and long-term.

Despite the fact that inefficiencies and shortcomings in translation and translation usage in health care settings have been widely studied, suggested ways forward that go beyond prescriptive guidelines and guidance for ‘working with interpreters’ are generally lacking.  Moreover, most studies explore either the experiences of practitioners, of migrants as service users, or those of interpreters.  Whilst providing important insights, this dominant approach tends to treat these three participants as separate entities, consequently masking the co-dependent and connected nature of their relationship during the health care consultation.  As a result these three participants in the health care encounter are rarely brought into dialogue with each other about the issues and challenges of effective translation in health care settings.  This project adopts a three-fold approach that aims to fill this gap: firstly empirically, by bringing together service providers, interpreters/translators and service users into the research design; secondly by  adopting a pedagogically-advised intercultural communication approach to training and developing this within the interpreting encounter; and thirdly by using practice-informed scenario-based role play and dramatisation as an effective training method for highlighting the different challenges that can arise for all parties where translation occurs in the health care encounter.

Research Methods & Proposed Training Model

Qualitative interviews will be conducted with health care professionals, migrants and interpreters and translators who have experience in this area.  These interviews will investigate the personal and professional experiences of these three groups within clinical settings.   Each interview will seek to understand the dynamics of interaction which occurs in translation in health care, and will aim to shed light on the specific professional, personal and emotional issues which will then feed into developing the training model.

Five workable scenarios will be developed from the interview data which will integrate the different parties’ experiences of translation in health care settings.  These scenarios will form the basis of an educational tool that can be used in a number of settings: with trainee clinicians and health care practitioners; with trainee interpreters and translators; and with migrants in understanding the role of translation in health care settings.

Further information

We will be developing these web pages further in the coming weeks and months, with updates on the project and useful links to partners and to related projects and organisations.

To find out more about this project, please get in touch with Teresa Piacentini Teresa.piacentini@glasgow.ac.uk or Alison Phipps: Alison.phipps@glasgow.ac.uk

 
(photo credit: Language Today interpreting agency)