Public Service Interpreting in Healthcare

Abstract
Health care is one of the traditional areas in which public service interpreting has most developed in the wake of increasing migration flows. Although this development has not necessarily been accompanied by adequate support to professionalization processes, over the last two decades growing interest in research has highlighted the complexities triggered by interpreting in doctor-patient interaction; these include dealing with medically relevant problems which may not be easily explained and understood by doctors and patients, and working in emotionally charged situations. Specifically, the chapter illustrates the tensions that arise in rendering medical issues while at the same time managing conversational dynamics and putting patients at ease. It does so by relying on two broad categories of studies: those which focus on the perceptions of people who work in and with medical interpreting (interpreters and healthcare providers); and those which analyse recorded authentic interpreter-mediated data from an interactional perspective.