VR Training Materials for Healthcare Interpreting in the Canary Islands

Abstract

Healthcare interpreting encompasses numerous medical specialties, making it difficult to adequately prepare interpreting students for all of them. Off-campus practicum hours are limited and often focus on just a few areas. In Spain, the situation is further complicated by the scarcity of specialized healthcare interpreting training programs—partly due to the lack of social recognition of the need for professional interpreters in medical contexts. Nevertheless, multiple studies highlight the economic and health-related consequences of the absence of professional interpreters in healthcare settings—especially in a leading destination for international tourism and international medical mobility such as the Canary Islands. The archipelago also has a growing foreign population—both residents and migrants in regular and irregular situations—who must legally receive equitable care. Emerging technologies such as VR offer promising avenues to enhance education and training of disciplines such as healthcare interpreting, in line with the 'learning by doing' principles. This talk presents an early-stage work that aims to develop a set of specialized training materials for healthcare interpreting with immersive scenarios, focusing on the creation process of these didactic materials, co-designed with real interpreting service users (foreign patients and healthcare providers) and intended training materials users (healthcare interpreters, interpreting trainees and trainers) of the Canary Islands to ensure the plausibility of the materials to real-life situations. The acceptability of VR will be evaluated through targeted user surveys. Ultimately, this work aspires to contribute to the professionalization of healthcare interpreting and to improve the quality of care in the territory. Preliminary survey data from interpreting service users and intended training materials users indicate a strong need for a set of materials with such features, which suggests their potential positive impact on interpreter training and healthcare delivery in the Canaries. By aligning immersive technologies with the demands of a specific region, this research adds to recent work at the intersection of interpreter training, healthcare communication and VR-based learning.