Took care of a patient this morning who spoke no English at all. The nurse went to pick her up from the hospital room to take her to the preop holding area and her husband (who spoke English) asked her to make sure that someone who spoke Spanish was available to talk to her in preop. I did the best I could as I was the only one who spoke any Spanish working in the ORs this morning, Our interaction was not optimal, however. I'm sure he wanted us to hold up our day to hunt down a translator on a Saturday (impossible) to accommodate her.

This woman has had a child in the United States a month ago and had braces so she has had dental work as well. However, she had no insurance (which paying for her hospitalization/surgery is not even the issue here) and we, the healthcare providers, are the ones expected to go above and beyond to take care of her. Just another example of the frustrations of healthcare and the things making it more difficult to just do our job. Spanish is not a requirement of medical school last I checked.

This post was edited on 5/17/14 at 10:24 pm

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Posted by mmcgrath

Indianapolis

Member since Feb 2010

35487 posts

Posted on 5/18/14 at 11:14 am to BeaumontBengal

quote:
Took care of a patient this morning who spoke no English at all. The nurse went to pick her up from the hospital room to take her to the preop holding area and her husband (who spoke English) asked her to make sure that someone who spoke Spanish was available to talk to her in preop. I did the best I could as I was the only one who spoke any Spanish working in the ORs this morning, Our interaction was not optimal, however. I'm sure he wanted us to hold up our day to hunt down a translator on a Saturday (impossible) to accommodate her.

This woman has had a child in the United States a month ago and had braces so she has had dental work as well. However, she had no insurance (which paying for her hospitalization/surgery is not even the issue here) and we, the healthcare providers, are the ones expected to go above and beyond to take care of her. Just another example of the frustrations of healthcare and the things making it more difficult to just do our job. Spanish is not a requirement of medical school last I checked.

A) You may be shocked to hear that they do have dental work, including braces, in every country in North and South America.
B) Do you really work at a hospital in Texas where no one speaks Spanish? Most hospitals have a phone number to call for interpreters. I don't think that offering the use of an interpreter for Spanish is really going "above and beyond."
C) Since the husband speaks English and Spanish, couldn't he have been scrubbed and allowed to go into pre-op? I know, above and beyond...