Entretien en binôme réanimateur et psychologue : la traduction en question

Abstract

BackgroundDoctors in intensive care units are frequently confronted with the task of announcing upcoming disasters (death, severe disabilities, etc.) to patients’ relatives. Although ICU physicians are accustomed to this difficult exercise, a discrepancy persists between the representations and language of the hospital staff and those of the patients and their relatives. The introduction of joint interviews with the psychologist during these announcements has raised several issues related to translation. ObjectivesThe aim of this article is to identify the different functions of translation that the psychologist can provide and their effects on the interactions between the ICU team and the relatives of patients admitted to intensive care in a critical condition. MethodBased on clinical experience of these multidisciplinary interviews, and on the testimonies gathered informally afterwards from relatives and staff, we propose to identify the effects of language and medical culture, identifying in particular moments of misunderstanding, communication “failures”, and gaps between hospital staff and patients’ relatives. This research makes use of conceptual tools from psychoanalysis and psychology. ResultsDifferences in representations and languages are identified between medical and lay culture, allowing us to identify the psychologist's multiple translation functions in these interactions between family members and caregivers. This function may involve at translating medical jargon for family members, but also translating and making the experience of relatives accessible to medical and paramedical staff. Finally, this study highlights key points concerning the relevance of interviews carried out with several professionals, and in particular those that associate physicians and psychologists. ConclusionsMedical language and culture appears as foreign to relatives of patients hospitalized in intensive care units especially when encountering intensive care doctors during complex moments of catastrophic announcements. The presence of a psychologist during these interviews, who plays the role of translator, makes it possible to grasp the differences that may appear between the two sides, and to calm the violence that this difference may cause for both relatives and hospital staff. This experience highlights the richness of the multidisciplinary approach in the context of announcement interviews.