earticle

영어

Medical interpreting services in Korea have a distinctive system where healthcare coordinators assume a wide variety of patient care responsibilities including marketing, administrative, interpreting, escorting, and medical duties, covering the whole process of medical care from pre-consultation arrangement to post-treatment care. Efforts at the government and private levels to foster professional healthcare interpreters through intensive interpreter training and certificate system have not been fully established on the field because hospitals usually hire coordinators or use inside hospital staff members with language competency to handle multi-tasks including interpreting. This study investigates the management system of interpreting services in the international healthcare centers at Korean university hospitals by having in-depth interviews with four directors and six coordinators regarding their personal information (educational background, experience, medical training, hiring process, and current responsibilities), and their opinions on the vagueness of job description, and overlapping of responsibilities. Interviews were conducted at four major university hospitals throughout August of 2018. Background literature reviews and preliminary interviews with healthcare professionals were conducted to formulate the main interview questions surrounding the hiring, managing, and training of medical interpreters and management of the interpreting system. The results demonstrated that the medical coordinator system leads to the lack of formalization of job responsibility and hiring/training process and increased role-conflict at Korean university hospitals. However, most interviewees admit that the medical coordinator system is the most optimized interpreting system for Korean hospitals and that coordinators are more valuable human resources than freelance interpreters who only conduct interpreting.