Language and Culture Series

Dr. Hsieh has been involved in research on bilingual health communication for over a decade. She has conducted ethnographic studies, in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, and multi-phase studies that examine the interactions between providers and patients who do not share the same language.

The three aspects that she has investigated are (a) the discrepancies between the beliefs and the practice of medical interpreters, (b) interpreters’ influences on the quality of health care services, and (c) interpreters’ mediation of conversational partners’ identities and communicative goals. She also has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to further expand her Bilingual Health Communication model, exploring providers’ expectations and needs for medical interpreters.