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Abstract

This research explores the experience of navigating relational work in interpreter-mediated non-emergency healthcare consultations. Using the lived-experience of six healthcare sign language interpreters, this research reveals interpreter-mediated healthcare consultations as a site of significant and shifting complexity. For those interviewed, adaptation and sensitivity to the physical, social, and larger cultural factors at play within a healthcare consultation were essential to effectively navigating relational-interactive work. Drawing on systems theory and complex systems theory, and guided by post-intentional phenomenology, this research highlights the interconnected and entangled nature of healthcare interpreting. Ultimately, this research emphasizes that effective navigation of interpreter-mediated healthcare appointments involves an ongoing co-learning and co-navigating process navigated between people, and the need to address it as such.