ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the various dimensions that shape provider interpreter trust and discusses how these complex norms shape healthcare delivery. It also identifies the various factors that shape provider's choice of interpreters and examines provider's control over medical encounters. Based on grounded theory, the author identified four themes that are influential in provider's choice of interpreter time constraints, alliances of care, therapeutic objectives and organizational-level considerations. The alliances of care highlight the interpersonal dimension of provider's choices, therapeutic objectives center on the clinical aspects of care. They influence provider's choices through clinical complexity, clinical urgency and patient privacy. Providers' preferences for interpreters who are familiar with their procedures also include a preference for interpreters who are familiar with clinical complexities. Differing from the impacts of clinical complexity through which providers make educated decisions for their best option in the given context, clinical urgency leaves providers with few choices in deciding the type of interpreter they will work with.
