Bridging Worlds, Bearing Burdens: Vicarious Trauma and Mental Health Among Spanish-Speaking Medical Interpreters

Background and Purpose: Linguistic barriers are a significant obstacle to accessing healthcare among Latine immigrants. Interpreters are invaluable members of the healthcare team in providing language concordance between providers and Spanish-speaking patients. While experiences of vicarious or secondary trauma have been investigated among other medical professionals such as doctors, nurses, and social workers, less is understood about the experiences of vicarious trauma among medical interpreters. Interpreters often share not only language with patients, but also immigration and cultural history that could have deleterious impacts on interpreter well-being and mental health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of vicarious trauma and mental well-being among Spanish language interpreters working in medical settings.

Methods: An interdisciplinary team consisting of a Spanish interpreter, social worker, and nurse developed the study and brought a strong interdisciplinary and collaborative perspective to the study development and analysis. Spanish-speaking medical interpreters were purposively sampled through the research teams networks. We conducted virtual interviews with 13 participants and inquired about their experience as interpreters, the impact of their work as an interpreter on their mental health, and any support they received from their place of employment to counteract the stress of their job. We used the rigorous and accelerated data reduction (RADaR) technique to analyze the data.

Results: Preliminary results show that participants experienced vicarious trauma through their work as medical interpreters. These vicarious trauma symptoms were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of structural support by their healthcare system, inadequate policies around interpretation in their healthcare system, and feeling increased connection to the patients they were interpreting for due to shared cultural backgrounds. Participants discussed the need for their healthcare system to find ways to better support interpreters by making them feel like a valuable member of the healthcare team. Additionally, interpreters discussed the need for increased training of healthcare professionals on best-practices in using interpreters with non-English speaking patients.

Conclusions and Implications: Our study found that medical interpreters show vulnerability to vicarious trauma that often led to mental health concerns and decreased well-being. These findings are applicable to social workers as interpreters are an essential part of interdisciplinary teams in not only healthcare settings, but within all systems within which social workers operate. Social workers are called to both advocate for the well-being of interpreters as essential providers, as well as working towards the creation of culturally grounded interventions to address vicarious trauma symptoms and increase well-being.