Constructing Patienthood in Brokered Medical Interaction: Iraqi–English Encounters

Constructing Patienthood is the first book-length work to place limited-English-speaking patients on equal footing with their interlocutors as essential partners in meaning-making. It builds on socio-medical research and language brokering to show how immigrant patients balance cooperation and independence to secure interactional zones that challenge discursive asymmetries in mediated doctor-patient encounters. Effective communication is key to impactful change in healthcare.

Format: Hardback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2023
Publisher: Lexington Books

Drawing on extensive firsthand experience of face-to-face meetings between patients and healthcare practitioners,Constructing Patienthood is the first book-length work dedicated to situating limited-English-speaking patients on equal footing with their interlocutors as essential partners in the process of meaning-making. Afaf Ali Nash builds on theoretical and empirical advancements in socio-medical research and language brokering to show how immigrant patients strike a balance between working cooperatively with their language brokers,or independently by overriding the language-assistance process to actuate multiple membership categories as patients,parents,and language brokerees. In doing so,they secure interactional zones that challenge the discursive asymmetries inherent in mediated doctor-patient encounters. This timely work makes it clear that impactful change in healthcare begins with successful communication.

Drawing on extensive firsthand experience of face-to-face meetings between patients and healthcare practitioners,Constructing Patienthood is the first book-length work dedicated to situating limited-English-speaking patients on equal footing with their interlocutors as essential partners in the process of meaning-making. Afaf Ali Nash builds on theoretical and empirical advancements in socio-medical research and language brokering to show how immigrant patients strike a balance between working cooperatively with their language brokers,or independently by overriding the language-assistance process to actuate multiple membership categories as patients,parents,and language brokerees. In doing so,they secure interactional zones that challenge the discursive asymmetries inherent in mediated doctor-patient encounters. This timely work makes it clear that impactful change in healthcare begins with successful communication.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781666902389