Primary health care research & development
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Prim Health Care Res Dev · Mar 2019
Physician perceptions of the types of roles interpreters play in limited English proficient pediatric encounters and how they evaluate the quality of interpretation.
The purpose of this study is to understand different roles that interpreters play in a pediatric, limited English proficient (LEP) health care encounter and to describe what factors within each role inform physicians' assessment of the overall quality of interpretation. ⋯ Physicians described four different interpreter roles: language conduit, flow manager, relationship builder, and cultural insider. Within each role, physicians described components of quality that informed their assessment of the overall quality of interpretation during a pediatric encounter. We found that for many physicians, a high-quality interpreted encounter involves multiple roles beyond language transmission. It is important for health care systems to understand how health care staff conceptualize these relationships so that they can develop appropriate expectations and trainings for medical interpreters in order to improve health outcomes in pediatric LEP patients.