Enhancing Caller Comprehensibility in Emergency Calls with a Language Barrier: Operators in the Role of Addressee

Abstract

Persons needing urgent help who call the emergency line must explain what has happened so that the operator can help and dispatch appropriate resources. Language barriers impede the process of securing mutual understanding. Our microanalysis of 25 simulated (unscripted) emergency calls involving language barriers showed that operators responded by implicitly indicating understanding, displaying understanding, or explicitly acknowledging non-understanding. Callers followed these operator responses systematically, contributing new information, confirming (or correcting) understanding, or repeating and rephrasing. Our findings exemplify the use of microanalysis to study listening processes and have implications for practice in emergency calls and other healthcare interactions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We acknowledge our colleague Arild Aambø for initiating this quality assurance project and articulating its overall purpose and direction in early stages. We could not have conducted the project without the cooperation of AMK Ullevål, which depended on leadership from Gunnar Farstad and many conversations with AMK operator Ingrid Ølberg. We would like to acknowledge Aambø for designing and conducting the simulated call project, which he did in collaboration with Ølberg (AMK Ullevål), Gerwing (NAKMI), Åge Jensen (National Centre on Emergency Communication in Health- Kokom), and Ruth Paintsil (Primærmedisinsk Verksted- PMV), and Ela Czapka (NAKMI). Funding for the simulated call project included reimbursing AMK operators for their time and travel (Kokom) and providing volunteer callers with an honorarium (PMV). In addition, we thank Warsame Ali for transcription and discussion. Finally, we thank Janet Bavelas for many important conversations during the analysis of the simulated call material.

Notes

¹ Two calls were dropped from analysis: one for technical reasons and one because of a dramatic and unusual unresolved misunderstanding that would constitute a case study in itself.