A standardised practice of language and understanding: When deaf parents and their babies meet paediatric nurses in Norwegian health centres for routine postnatal consultations

Abstract

Deaf patients mostly experience unequal and inaccessible health services and bad health encounters with health professionals, both with and without interpreters present. This study provides insight into the perspectives on languages and modalities that emerge when (hearing) health professionals meet deaf parents with their babies in health centres, even with a sign language interpreter present. The study uncovers that deaf signing parents encounter a frame of “normate” that influences how their lived experiences and their signed language are perceived by the health professional. The empirical material comprises four video recordings from consultations, each involving a sign language interpreter, supported by recordings of interviews with deaf women after their routine postnatal consultations. Thematic analysis was applied to scrutinise the empirical material from actual consultations and interviews, this was followed by further analysis and discussion with perspectives from crip theory and crip linguistic lenses. The most significant finding is that spoken language has hegemony; in contrast, signed languages and deaf experiences are poorly supported, or not at all. The health professionals lack knowledge about how to meet, support and encourage deaf parents, their babies, and their preferred language. The lack of knowledge leads to sign language, and being deaf in the family not being understood, overlooked, neglected and poorly supported. Implications for practice may be that health education programmes need to implement an expanded understanding of language.