I usually pride in the patience I have when explaining procedures/therapy modalities to my patients. Over the past couple weeks though I’ve had a few patients who were Spanish-speaking and I was not able to fully convey the meaning of what I had to say to them. I felt unsettled about leaving them to a foreign machine that I’d half ass explained in a language that was foreign to them. Even when working in the hospital it never sat right with me to barge into a sick person’s room and through spasmodic hand movements and gestures (no, I don’t do the yelling thing as I’ve realized that English even at a higher decibel is still, English) tell them what I was about to do to/for them.
Translators, in my opinion, help but tend to make an already impersonal situation even less personal. It’s like playing the telephone game, some small bit of information is bound to get loss or misinterpreted, especially if your translator doesn’t have a detailed medical background. I believe (and I know some will disagree) that there should be a larger effort on the part of the medical community to not only learn the languages of our client base, but to also learn more about their culture. Some aspects or behaviors that are suitable in American culture just don’t fly in others. This doesn’t make that culture odd or backwards, as the attitudes and behavior of some in health care would dictate. They are just different and would like to be understood and cared for as we would hope to be if we became ill abroad.
Some health care facilities are making great strides in the area of diversity training, some even holding mandatory classes yearly. However, the pace must be stepped up as our increasingly connected society shrinks the globe more and more each day. As for me. I’ve always been a lover of language. Maybe it’s time for me to step up my “hablo” a little bit, sí?
Stacey Rose RRT
Cool link I found:
Breathe & Stop 