Inherent Tensions and Challenges of Oncologist–Patient Communication: Implications for Interpreter Training in Health-care Settings

By examining actual medical encounters, we identify specific communicative characteristics inherent in gynecologic oncologist–patient interactions in the USA that may lead to challenges and barriers to successful bilingual health care. By using monolingual medical encounters, we aim to address the research design challenges in the field of bilingual health care and to generate new approaches to the research and training of health-care interpreting. In total, 44 segments (553.25 minutes) of the first medical visits to a gynecologic oncology clinic were included in the study. Using discourse analysis and a grounded hermeneutic approach, we found that oncologist–patient communication poses challenges for interpreters' management of medical encounters in the following ways: (1) speakers' inconsistent, ambiguous talk, (2) incompatible sociolinguistic norms, and (3) providers' multilayered identity performances. Our findings highlight the importance of educating interpreters to be not only responsive but also proactive in managing the various intended and unintended meanings emerged in the discursive process.