Healthcare interpreters and difficult conversations: a survey

Area of Science:

• Medical Communication
• Healthcare Professional Well-being
• Interpreter Studies

Background:

• Difficult conversations in healthcare, including serious diagnoses and end-of-life discussions, pose unique challenges.
• Healthcare interpreters play a crucial role in facilitating these sensitive interactions.
• Understanding the impact on interpreters and their perspectives is vital for optimizing patient care and professional support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the impact of difficult conversations on healthcare interpreters.
• To evaluate interpreters' perceptions of how these conversations are conducted.
• To identify interpreters' suggestions for improving difficult conversations.

Main Methods:

• A survey incorporating the Professional Quality of Life measure 5 was distributed to healthcare interpreters in an Australian state.
• Outcome measures included compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout, and secondary traumatic stress (STS).
• Interpreters' opinions on conversation quality and improvement suggestions were collected.

Main Results:

• 94 interpreters responded, with 65.9% scoring high on CS; no respondents scored high on burnout or STS.
• Younger interpreters (18-30) reported higher burnout scores.
• Top concerns were lack of pre-discussion content knowledge and guilt delivering bad news; top suggestions were prebriefing and cultural explanation opportunities.

Conclusions:

• Healthcare interpreters in this survey reported positive well-being (moderate/high CS) and did not experience high burnout or STS.
• Recommendations include enhanced training and guidelines for facilitating difficult conversations.
• Further research is needed to identify factors contributing to compassion fatigue in interpreters.