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Should professional interpreters be able to conscientiously object in healthcare settings?
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  • Published on: 12 December 2019
    Professional interpreters are human beings

    Interpreting and translation are unregulated activities in most countries, yet interpreters and translators perform challenging work in sensitive domains, such as medicine. Interpreters and translators rarely have access to ethical infrastructure and the function and ethical boundaries of ‘interpreting practice’ are not widely known .

    Translators or interpreters do not cease being human beings with human rights, when they enter their profession. All human beings, including interpreters, possess human rights and human freedoms. Conscientious objection is a right derived from the human right to freedom of conscience. Human beings (interpreters) are not machines; machines, when maintained, are on the whole very predictable and reliable. Interpreters like other human beings can be creative, self-aware, imaginative and flexible in their thinking.

    Limitations exist in workplaces that cannot allow for a variety of opinions, thoughts, beliefs and conscientious positions.

    Moral distress is a wide spread problem for health care providers in a range of acute and community health care settings. The understanding of moral distress may differ depending on the extent to which the problem is located in individual and/or systemic /structural factors. Healthcare staff members (as human beings) react in various ways when ethically/morally challenged: they may withdraw from ethically challenging situations; change their position; and/or continue to raise object...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.
  • Published on: 6 December 2019
    Healthcare staff wanted. No one with a conscientious objection need apply?

    Help wanted. No Irish need apply.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/new-york-times-finds-...

    Are we to expect the following?

    Healthcare staff wanted. No one with a conscientious objection need apply.

    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.

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