Higher sem. TÖI. Sofía Antequera Manzano: Medical interpreting in maternity and obstetrics

The access to healthcare services for migrant patients, especially women, is often hindered by factors such as linguistic differences, socio-educational vulnerabilities and unfamiliarity with the healthcare system, which ultimately impact the quality of care. In Spain, despite the present migratory context and the current regulations regarding patient rights and autonomy, the right to successful communication and linguistic provision is rarely mentioned in healthcare protocols. The presence of translators and interpreters is underregulated and technological tools such as Google Translate are among the most common strategies to communicate with allophone patients.

In said context, the present study analyses communication in the obstetrics and gynaecology setting, one of the most used services by migrant women in Spain, to determine the way communicative rights are enforced and the impact of professional interpreting. Following a discourse analysis approach, a series of real-life appointments with migrant patients recorded in a Spanish tertiary hospital will be examined in a tripartite analysis: monolingual conversations between native speakers; monolingual conversations between native and non-native speakers; and multilingual interpreted conversations. Preliminary results point at the prevalence of power differences between providers and patients, deficiency of interpreting skills in non-specialised interpreters and high emotional responses throughout the interaction.