re: Spanish speaking in the United States

A. The patient likely had the braces placed in the USA since she lives here. I know she had the baby in Galveston because I asked. The point is she seeks medical care in the USA and expects us to accommodate the fact that she speaks no English. She has made no efforts to even try and pick up a basic English vocabulary despite living here and beginning to raise a family here.

B. There's is no magic phone line where I work to just dial up a Spanish interpreter. I had that when I was at Vanderbilt for residency but not every community hospital has the resources a major teaching institution does. The interpreters employed by the hospital are not there on weekends. I don't know if they're even available on the weekends but if they were we would've had to call them in and delay a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, two scrub techs, an OR nurse, and a PACU nurse and wasted an hour of their time. They have other places to be and other patients to take care of. Wasting an extra hour of your day is not realistic when your time is valuable.

C. The husband couldn't come to the preop area because he had to take care of the 1 month old baby.

How many times do you get woken up in the wee hours of the morning to do your job, which requires putting yourself (and those dependent on you) at significant liability (often not even getting paid for your services)? Then on top of that be expected to know skills above and beyond what your job is? Spanish is not part of medical training. I'm not trained to be fluent in Spanish. I'm trained to take care of sick patients.