Some musings on language barriers.

One of the (admittedly multiple) reasons for choosing the USA for this elective, was, in all seriousness, because they are English-speaking, so I wouldn’t have to be trying to work and cope in another language at the same time. Oops.

While fellow students learnt Spanish medical words (l’estomacho! Phayngeo! Laryngeo! El guardo!), I merely smiled and contented myself with looking through a couple of A&E handbooks, and revising my emergency care knowledge.

Um, yes. So I turned up at the ER and my first three patients all spoke Spanish exclusively. It’s not taken long for me to 1) befriend the fantastic people who speak Spanish (a couple of the doctors and nurses) and 2) learn some important Spanish words. A typical consultation: “Hola! Mi llamo Olivia. Dolor? Si? Esta qui? Muchos? Por quito? Urinado? Sangrias?” (Hello! My name is Olivia. Pain? Yes? Where? Lots? Not a lot? Weeing? Blood?”). Which, when you think about it, is all you really need to know… ish.

But I do have an entertaining story about one of the patients who spoke Spanish with a tiny tiny bit of English. I went in with one of the other doctors, and a nurse who spoke Spanish. The patient was a teenager, and her mother was with her. We took a history, with the nurse translating, which was pretty challenging all in all… then went out to write our notes and think about what was going on. A little later, the resident I’d been following came over to us and started talking about this patient. She had a somewhat different history to us, and we asked her who’d translated for her. Hmm. Apparently, the same patient had spoken perfect English. (!!!).

The other main language difference I’ve noticed is, bizarrely, one small word. Ma’am. I have been called ma’am almost continuously. “How are you feeling today?” “not so good ma’am”. “does it hurt here?” “yes ma’am”. “Where is the bathroom, please?” “Right over there, ma’am”.

I’m all ma’am-ed out.