You need to take a lot of responsibility yourself for the communication. It’s mainly the doctor’s responsibility to be clear enough for you to understand. So do ask for clarification when things are unclear. The interpreter can be helpful too, so don’t nod and pretend to understand, because then the interpreter will just go on and think things are fine. You can ask the interpreter to spell more terms, in order to clarify, or talk to them about other ways they can be more clear. But both the doctor and the interpreter needs to become aware of that the communication isn’t working well in order to change something. I know this can be hard. For me, I get into situations like that both when I cannot hear something in a hearing context even though people try to be clear and repeat things, and when using interpreters or in signing contexts because of my still limited fluency.
Another option for doctor’s visits might be CART, if that is easier than using an interpreter.
In general it is important to signal to both doctor and interpreter that the message isn’t clear. You can try to ask questions yourself to get clarification.
