Values

Values are broad, core beliefs about what is good, what we aspire to and what we strive to protect.[1]

The values of the healthcare interpreting profession are present at all times. They guide healthcare interpreters when they are deciding which behaviors and actions will best support the healthcare goals of the parties in the encounter. The profession’s values help interpreters stay true to their main purpose and function, which is to make communication and understanding possible between two parties who do not speak the same language or share the same cultural context, in support of equitable healthcare across languages and cultures.

Occasionally, conflict between two values may arise, creating ethical dilemmas. In such cases, the values in conflict need to be examined against the best outcome that could be hoped for in the specific situation.

Ethical principles

Ethical principles are intermediate ethical concepts [2] that provide more specific behavioral guidance.

The ethical principles of the healthcare interpreting profession describe the essential behaviors and responsibilities of healthcare interpreters. They offer guidance when choosing which behavior is ethically most appropriate in a given situation. Additionally, they help service users, such as medical providers and patients, understand what to expect when working with professional interpreters.

Standards of practice

Standards of practice are the most specific level of professional guidelines [2:1], detailing specific actions that interpreters take in order to put into practice the ethical principles of the profession.

  1. Protect: To foster or shield from infringement or restriction, to guard, to cover, or shield from exposure, injury, damage, or destruction, (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) ↩︎

  2. Dean, R. K., & Pollard, R. Q. (2022). Improving interpreters’ normative ethics discourse by imparting principled reasoning through case analysis. Interpreting and Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2(1), 55-72. https://doi.org/10.1177/27523810211068449 (Original work published 2022) ↩︎ ↩︎