Goble Ryan, Vickers Caroline H
Commun Med. 2015;12(2-3):171-85. doi: 10.1558/cam.30177.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the computer in medical consultations in which English- Spanish-bilingual medical providers interact with Spanish-monolingual patients. Following previous studies that have revealed that the presence of the computer in consultations detracts from direct provider– patient communication, we pay specific attention to how the use of the computer in Spanish-language medical consultations can complement or adversely affect the co-construction of the patient’s health narrative. The data for the present study consist of 36 Spanish-language medical consultations in Southern California. Applying a conversation analytical approach to the health narratives in the corpus, we argue that the computer is essentially a third interactant to which medical providers orient through lowered volume, minimal responses, bureaucratic side talk, and, most importantly, code-switching to English – all of which strip the patients of control over the co-construction of their health narrative with their medical provider. Because the patient does not have access to the computational task and the language, we posit that this exacerbates the already existing adverse effects that the computer has on provider–patient interaction.
本文的目的是研究计算机在英语 - 西班牙语双语医疗服务提供者与只会说西班牙语的患者进行医疗咨询时所起的作用。先前的研究表明，咨询过程中计算机的存在会干扰医患之间的直接沟通，在此基础上，我们特别关注计算机在西班牙语医疗咨询中的使用如何补充或不利地影响患者健康叙述的共同构建。本研究的数据包括南加州的36次西班牙语医疗咨询。通过对语料库中的健康叙述应用会话分析方法，我们认为计算机本质上是第三个互动者，医疗服务提供者通过降低音量、简短回应、进行公事公办的闲聊，以及最重要的是切换到英语来与它互动——所有这些都剥夺了患者与医疗服务提供者共同构建其健康叙述的控制权。由于患者无法接触到计算机任务和语言，我们认为这加剧了计算机对医患互动已经存在的不利影响。
