Abstract of Project Funded for FY 2000
| Deaf Doctors and their Hearing Patients
Laura Sanheim, ASL, Linguistics and Interpretation Medical encounters - when doctors or other health professionals meet with patients who are looking for information and relief from an ailment - happen every day in a wide variety of settings. Before making a diagnosis, doctors must work to establish rapport with their patients in order to find out the specific reason(s) for their visit. When doctor and patient do not share the same language, however, interpreters are often called in to bridge the gap so that each party can reach their goals in the encounter. This study will look at an interpreted medical encounter between a Deaf doctor using American Sign Language (ASL) and a hearing patient using spoken English. Following the distribution of a survey of Deaf health professionals to identify potential subjects, the researcher will videotape doctor and patient in a real medical encounter with a professional, nationally certified ASL-English interpreter. A qualitative analysis will be done, with specific focus on the utterances produced by the interpreter, and how those utterances affect the communication between doctor and patient. This information will then be shared with the Deaf, hearing, medical and interpreting communities in order to better understand both interpreted medical encounters and the interpreting services provided therein. |