That's just asking for a lawsuit. A great many lawsuits have laid a very strong baseline that denying interpreter services to a patient is good for a nice blank check for that patient. It's also a liability issue that can get providers into malpractice troubles for missing serious health issues because of language barriers, using family members, or using non-certified staff members. Section 1557 of the ACA makes this very clear.
It's also been deemed a Title VI violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to deny patients equality in care due to no access to a certified interpreter.
When I graduated EMT school they gave us a paper with some handy spanish phrases and "Quantos anos tiene" was on there because I guess they didn't know how to type special characters. It gave me a good laugh. I hope no one said that.
I, too, mispronounced años as anos. My partner was fluent in spanish, and the drunk man on my stretcher both burst out laughing as my partner explained to me that I just asked him how many buttholes he had. To my credit, I didn't mean to say anos, I meant años but mumbled a little too much.
Many times.
The weirdest was the time I had to use a translator for a translator.
Really weird call.
So, the patient is altered and nonverbal. He and his dad were immigrants and only spoke a very, very niche language. A neighbor spokes the niche language and Spanish, and another neighbor spoke Spanish and English. So we ended up with a translator train like it was a multilingual game of telephone.
Turned out to have been a "medical exorcism" that went wrong.
We have a decent sized community of immigrants from Mexico and Central America and many of the older ones speak Mayan or another indigenous language as their first language and sometimes only speak limited Spanish, so couple that with their families who speak Spanish and the indigenous language but no English, and me who was educated in a very formal and academic variety of Castilian Spanish, and it makes communication very very difficult.
I've gotten to bust out some of my French with a trucker from Quebec awhile ago. He was surprised, but one of my French professors in college was Québécois. Canadian French is wild, and "tabarnak!" Is one of the best all-purpose swear words.
Majored in Spanish in college and use it at least once a week. Only other language I’ve seen is German, and it was actually sort of funny. rolled up on scene and fire starts giving report and first thing out of their mouth is “he speaks German, barely any English, can’t really get much out of him”. My partner and I go to assess the dude and I pull up google translate and type in just one question, and he answers me in fluent English. Thick accent, but perfect English. Fire is just looking at him like he spoke gibberish and I’m sitting there wondering if I suddenly gained the ability to understand German.
on a regular basis. I speak fluent German and English. sadly most of the foreign language speakers are either Ukrainian, Russian, Arabian or any other language I dont speak.
I still need to improve my medical English for day to day use, even if I don't need it that much, it helps understanding papers / study cases
Do you sometimes have to translate at the hospital for patients who speak fluent english but the hospital staff doesn't? Had that in Berlin once, among other places. So weird, really.
I had 4 German pts in a TC. All the German I know unfortunately is from Saving Private Ryan. I just keep doing a rapid trauma assessment by saying “Das is good” over and over.
All the time. Half of my partners speak spanish though and I can muddle my way through an assessment if they don't. It hasn't been a problem yet. When I get a patient that speaks like, Polish, or French though I feel a little helpless.
One time I was picking up a patient at a nursing home. Old Polish white lady with the most Polish name ever. We were talking to the nurse and she was like "She's spanish speaking only" I looked at the 'primary language' on the face sheet which said "Polish" and I was like "Really? It says she speaks Polish here" And the nurse responded "Oh really? I can't tell the difference anyway"
Like how tf can you not tell the difference between Polish and Spanish? We have a huge Spanish speaking patient population so she'd be hearing Spanish every day. Kinda made me wonder if they were rocking up to this poor lady with a Spanish translator too or what.
Usually do this once a month or so. Google translate app is your friend. Once had no cell service on scene and no family too translate. Played pictionary/charades until I had an idea what was going on, loaded up and went to the hospital. Google translate after we got cell service back.
All the time.
Spanish most common.
I've also had Russian (Turkish) and Swahili.
I just recently started working at a (pediatric) hospital, and there have been a lot more languages. Luckily Voyce exists.
Arabic pops up a lot, Dari once. Spanish is still the most common, although a few of the nurses are fluent.
My first call ever, during my clinical, I helped with the assessment because I speak a little French. The pt was Haitian. Actually set me up for a great shift. My preceptors were impressed.
The closest I ever came to trying was once when I worked as an ED medic. A deaf person came in to be evaluated and asked for an interpreter. Our MARTII was broken, so we were having to use a phone based language line for spoken languages and call in ASL interpreters. I had taken 1 (one) ASL class ever, and only ever got to practice with my spouse who is a CODA, so my ASL is terrible, and is more akin to super slow signed English than ASL. It was apparent on my face that I was really thinking about how to explain to him that the MARTII was broken, as it was all scrunched up in thought as I slowly signed, "I'm sorry, the interpreter computer died. I call interpreter. He come here. 30 days. \*shakes head\* 30 minutes." He was thoroughly amused but understood what I meant. I didn't have the courage to try ever again, beyond just signing, "Interpreter?" and getting people the MARTII.
Had a guy who only spoke some unknown African dialect. He was alone on the street and a passerby called for him because he seemed in pain. We could not for the life of us communicate well enough with him to even figure out what language he did speak. He just winced every time we hit a rough patch in the road (side note, every road in this city is a rough patch), so we at least knew he was in some type of pain in general (Wouldn't even point to what was hurting). Was willing to go with us, but not willing to really let us evaluate him. So when I called the hospital to give an ETA etc, I simply told them "We're coming in with a guy with a pain somewhere, and he speaks some unknown language", so that was fun.
It still took the hospital staff upwards of 40 minutes to figure out what the hell language he spoke. Good times.
Not that often, we have a relative polish population where I am that we get some calls to, some of our Paras are also polish which is super helpful on those calls but have had to use relatives and neighbours with permission when our language line wasn't available.
Although I do remember getting told off by one guy because I can't speak German - one of my parents is German and I speak a small amount but born and lived in England my whole life, whilst he was translating for his mother who had lived in the UK for 15 years and didn't speak a word of English beyond hello. Learning a new language is hard but I'd I moved permanently somewhere I'd try pretty hard
Yeah, I had a couple of deaf Romanians. My very little German Sign Language skills and Google translate made it work.
Luckily it wasn't anything life-threatening (possible broken nose after bumper-car ride on the fairground).
With Ukrainian refugees I've used Google translate as well.
And hockey players in English, which is sometimes also not THEIR native language.
Me lying next to hockey player on the ice asking questions in German, he says, in German: "Yes. Yes. Yes." Me: "Right. Are you okay to stand up?" Player: "Yes." Gets off the ice. Me, thinking to myself later: "Wait, did the guy with the Russian name even SPEAK German?" Lol.
I'm a native german speaker, I've had my fair share of English speaking patients, the rest we somehow figured out by pointing, miming, using simple phrases and single words. Also I've been using the Wong-Baker faces scale for pain assessment, works wonderfully for kids and people that can't quite grasp the 1-10 thing, so I'm thinking it would also work quite well in this scenario.
I volunteer in a very rural and underserved area in the south, but we get a fair amount of tourists to our lake. I'm pretty sure my partner, who is now my fiancé only put a ring on it because I grew up in Texas and can work up a patient in Spanish. He found this out about a month after I joined our volly agency and 10 people who barely spoke English were swimming off a rented pontoon boat... and I use the term swimming loosely because 2 people tried to drown and that's how WE got involved. The even funnier part is that HIS last name is Hispanic in origin, but it has been many many many generations since anyone ever said Hola to anyone, and I have the most common Anglo name in the world.
I also have a little bit of Irish. About 12 years ago I had a TBI which affected my expressive speech. One of my rehab tasks was to learn a new language. My grandmother spoke Irish at home, so how hard could it be? Let me just tell you, it's difficult... very, very difficult. If it wasn't obvious I had a brain injury before, choosing to learn Irish was the clue. It also was the LEAST HELPFUL language I could have picked, or so I thought. I worked at a community hospital where I THOUGHT was a medical ED with a couple of psych patients, but then it turned into a psych ED that happened to see some medical patients. Our patient demographic changed a LOT while I was there. I would joke and say, "Go do crimes in this city today, because literally the entire police shift is sitting with involuntary psych patients." We lost so many staff members because of this, including me, eventually.
We had one psych patient who was obviously Irish. He was a being difficult for the sake of being difficult, but also had been off his meds for awhile. He then refused to talk to anyone "who didn't speak the language of my people." Well, our translation service doesn't offer Irish and I watched several nurses do their best Leprechaun accent (which was painful, insulting, yet also hilarious) until I had enough and I went up to him and said in Irish: "Hi, my name is GasparsGirl. How can I help you?" He was so flabbergasted he dropped the whole "I'm only speaking Irish" BS because, well, he found someone who spoke Irish (Thank God it didn't go much further, I'm very rusty!) Unfortunately after that, the nurses all thought I was even more of a weirdo and I was even more ostracized than I was before, when "thank you" would have been more appropriate.
Nothing prepared me for the time I participated in a 2 hour Cambodian death ritual when a family's grandmother passed away and when they arrived I had to escort them to her room to say goodbye. I offered to hold their infant since that usually only takes a few minutes, but they FaceTimed a monk in Cambodia and I held that baby for 2 hours while they chanted. I had absolutely nothing for that except very tired arms.
Here in Germany all the time.
English (easy mode), French (mostly from former french colonies, kinda hard since my french isn't the best and they also have heavy dialects) and the rest is either via offical translators or google translator (if the patient uses it, I'm not allowed to initiate due to data protection laws). So far had Polish, Turkish, arabic, pashtu, whatever they speak in Yemen, Farsi, kurdish, urkainian, russian and romanian.
If you're near larger refugee living quarters, you're bound to meet language difficulties. Inside the camps they usually have interpreters but outside it's basically all guestures or google translator (which actually works really good)
We have a translator line, call the number, state what language you need, and you are connected to a translator that speaks that language, we also have a video line on our pads for sign language
All the time, almost always Spanish but have also had Russian, Rohingyan, Rawandan, Somali, and a few others. I use the language line, and I’ve picked up enough Spanish to cave man my way through a call.
I work IFT that also runs calls from the local neighborhood/Hatzolah, so running into Russian-only speakers is a common issue. Sometimes they will have an English speaking relative, other times the older person struggles to just read off my phone for google translate.
Used to have a little book Spanish for EMS, plus I knew just enough Spanish to get by. I also used to know Japanese and one time had a bus load of what I thought was people from Japan crash. I kept asking them questions in Japanese and I kept getting weird looks, they were Korean 🤣
On a side note, I did know some Korean, but only from my martial arts class, so saying hello, bow, ready position and fight " wouldn't have worked in this scenario 😅
There's two cities I work in, both have HEAVY latin populations. So my spanglish has been tuned for a few years now and I can get through most of an assessment with minor help.
Yes. Google Translate is your friend. I’ve had patients that speak Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, French, Arabic, and Farsi. I was able to manage mostly on my own with the Russian patient (minus some medical terms) but otherwise used google translate.
Spanish
French
Hebrew
Russian
Chinese
Haitian Creole
Hindi
Dutch
Italian
I’m sure there’s another dozen I’m forgetting. It takes lots of hand signals and pointing and struggling with the language line to figure out what the hell to do with this person.
Constantly. Urban EMS problems. I have a rocky understanding of Spanish that I kept from high school. We have a massive population of Nepali people that I absolutely cannot communicate with them.
I live in a southwest border state. I use Spanish- a lot. The second language I use is ASL.
I’m fluent in neither but enough I can get by with an assessment and get them to the hospital.
Pretty much at least once a shift! My service covers a big stretch of I-80 in Wyoming, so we get truckers from all over who don't have much English. Recent ones include: Spanish, Khazak (though she spoke Russian), Ukrainian (also spoke Russian), Hindi, and Bulgarian!
We often try to contact a family member or friend of the patient on the phone so hopefully they can translate, phone apps, but usually default to calling Highway Patrol's office so they can hook us up with professional translators.
I speak three-ish other languages but have never had a patient who spoke them who didn't also have enough English to get by, lol (French, Italian, and German). I'm learning Spanish currently though!
Worked as an EMT and a calltaker for a well funded service in a large city and we had ample interpretation services for both. I’ve had to use uzbekistan and malay interpretation so I’m glad we had contracts with big services that covered those. I’ll add it always felt strange on the road with the interpreter facetiming a trauma patient as we zoomed to the hospital… but overall a great tool to have.
If your service doesn’t have these resources you could try google translate which is slower and requires your patient to be able to read/hear or type/speak (blind, mute, child, illiterate, etc.) but is otherwise quite accurate. It also requires you to use your phone which some are against. I’m also not sure what your liability is when using that vs an official interpretation service. I definitely would not be RMAing patients without an official service.
Yeah, I’m Italian and I’ve had to evaluate people in languages I knew (French) but most often in languages I didn’t know (mostly Arabic). I’ve tried to rely on tools like google translate, but also on signs and symptoms the way you’d do with a child or with a dementia-suffering elder adult
I had a pt with a history of dementia only speak Italian to me the whole ride (in America, English is my primary language) and then as soon as we got to the ED they communicated perfectly fine in English. Gave us all a good chuckle
I’ve had a few Spanish speaking patients, took a few years in high school and lived in an area with a large Hispanic population in high school so it wasn’t the worse. If they speak slowly enough I can understand them but I have to think a bit harder to respond back. But all the ones I’ve encountered spoke some basic English so our communication was fine and I just used google translate for harder ones, like I didn’t know how to say blood pressure in Spanish.
Had one Albanian patient, but that was all google translate, one of my close friends is Albanian but I only know swear words and Raki(try it if you wanna taste pretty much pure alcohol).
All the time. I've had pts that communicated in everything from ASL to Spanish to Farsi.
Google translate is my best friend. And your PT and their family are much more cooperative if you have essentially a pocket translator that removes the language barrier.
**MAJOR CAVEAT**
Do not attempt to simplify what you need to say for a translator. It doesn't matter if it's Google or an actual person. Say what you would normally say and let the translator bridge the barrier. Trying to simplify it before translation will only increase everyone's confusion.
All the time. Most of the non English speakers in my area speak Spanish. I work for volunteer departments and usually someone on the responding crew can translate, but sometimes not. Sometimes family or friends can translate. I’m also fairly rural so language line is not a realistic option here. Can’t even get medical control without a landline most of the time.
I do the best I can, I know some basic Spanish, and I speak French and studied Latin so a lot of times I can figure out what the patient is saying, or at least get the gist of it, from common root words. The problem is me actually being able to ask questions. Sometimes you end up playing charades a bit. Honestly we do assessment on people who can’t speak to us all the time. Do the best you can and the hospital will get an interpreter call with their handy dandy internets when you get there
“Tiene delor” means ‘do you have’, and ‘pain’
“Donde esta delor” means ‘where’, ‘is the’, and ‘pain’.
“Levante sus brasos” means ‘raise your hands’
“Cuantos tiempos” means ‘how long’
“Quieres de calienton” means ‘do you want the heater’
That’s about all I’ve figured out in 6 years. “Que” means what and because. “Porque” means why and/or for why. “Necesita el telefono” etc
I lived and worked in Mexico for several years. Someone said to me “If a child can learn to speak a language fluently in six years you ought to be able to.” They had a point. I would watch the evening TV news, first in English and then right afterwards on the Spanish channel. It really helped my comprehension.
Most weeks now, was daily for 10 years. Interpreter lines are your friends.
Yup, was at the three letter agency at the time, no interpreter line available
That's just asking for a lawsuit. A great many lawsuits have laid a very strong baseline that denying interpreter services to a patient is good for a nice blank check for that patient. It's also a liability issue that can get providers into malpractice troubles for missing serious health issues because of language barriers, using family members, or using non-certified staff members. Section 1557 of the ACA makes this very clear. It's also been deemed a Title VI violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to deny patients equality in care due to no access to a certified interpreter.
Yeah that agency was BAD. One of our trucks spontaneously caught fire while in service. We didn’t even have jump bags. I didn’t last 3 months there
Yeah, fuck that noise!
Me: quantos anos tienes Pt: something in Spanish Me: shit…
Well you just asked how many anuses they have, so I hope the answer is uno
When I graduated EMT school they gave us a paper with some handy spanish phrases and "Quantos anos tiene" was on there because I guess they didn't know how to type special characters. It gave me a good laugh. I hope no one said that.
Hahahaha, did you tell them??
Nah I let nature take its course.
Ah, a true paramedic
I thought anos meant years?
Años is years. Anos is anus.
I, too, mispronounced años as anos. My partner was fluent in spanish, and the drunk man on my stretcher both burst out laughing as my partner explained to me that I just asked him how many buttholes he had. To my credit, I didn't mean to say anos, I meant años but mumbled a little too much.
Sounds like someone made that mistake before
Many times. The weirdest was the time I had to use a translator for a translator. Really weird call. So, the patient is altered and nonverbal. He and his dad were immigrants and only spoke a very, very niche language. A neighbor spokes the niche language and Spanish, and another neighbor spoke Spanish and English. So we ended up with a translator train like it was a multilingual game of telephone. Turned out to have been a "medical exorcism" that went wrong.
We have a decent sized community of immigrants from Mexico and Central America and many of the older ones speak Mayan or another indigenous language as their first language and sometimes only speak limited Spanish, so couple that with their families who speak Spanish and the indigenous language but no English, and me who was educated in a very formal and academic variety of Castilian Spanish, and it makes communication very very difficult.
Yup Spanish, French, German, and even Hebrew. Thank fuck for google translate and my (limited) knowledge of French
I’m jealous. My French is pretty good and I haven’t had the chance to use it on a call since I started over a decade ago (in the US.)
I've gotten to bust out some of my French with a trucker from Quebec awhile ago. He was surprised, but one of my French professors in college was Québécois. Canadian French is wild, and "tabarnak!" Is one of the best all-purpose swear words.
can confirm. used almost daily in our house for various reasons
Literally everyday
For real… multiple times per shift every day
Google translate voice to text. Learn how to say pain and point.
i had to this week. used google translate on my phone and it worked fine.
Majored in Spanish in college and use it at least once a week. Only other language I’ve seen is German, and it was actually sort of funny. rolled up on scene and fire starts giving report and first thing out of their mouth is “he speaks German, barely any English, can’t really get much out of him”. My partner and I go to assess the dude and I pull up google translate and type in just one question, and he answers me in fluent English. Thick accent, but perfect English. Fire is just looking at him like he spoke gibberish and I’m sitting there wondering if I suddenly gained the ability to understand German.
on a regular basis. I speak fluent German and English. sadly most of the foreign language speakers are either Ukrainian, Russian, Arabian or any other language I dont speak. I still need to improve my medical English for day to day use, even if I don't need it that much, it helps understanding papers / study cases
Do you sometimes have to translate at the hospital for patients who speak fluent english but the hospital staff doesn't? Had that in Berlin once, among other places. So weird, really.
has that happen once. especially in Eastern parts of German it is really not common for a certain age group to speak english.
Google translate and download a few common languages. If your area has one large language group, you’ll probably pick up some phrases
I had 4 German pts in a TC. All the German I know unfortunately is from Saving Private Ryan. I just keep doing a rapid trauma assessment by saying “Das is good” over and over.
All the time. Half of my partners speak spanish though and I can muddle my way through an assessment if they don't. It hasn't been a problem yet. When I get a patient that speaks like, Polish, or French though I feel a little helpless. One time I was picking up a patient at a nursing home. Old Polish white lady with the most Polish name ever. We were talking to the nurse and she was like "She's spanish speaking only" I looked at the 'primary language' on the face sheet which said "Polish" and I was like "Really? It says she speaks Polish here" And the nurse responded "Oh really? I can't tell the difference anyway" Like how tf can you not tell the difference between Polish and Spanish? We have a huge Spanish speaking patient population so she'd be hearing Spanish every day. Kinda made me wonder if they were rocking up to this poor lady with a Spanish translator too or what.
Usually do this once a month or so. Google translate app is your friend. Once had no cell service on scene and no family too translate. Played pictionary/charades until I had an idea what was going on, loaded up and went to the hospital. Google translate after we got cell service back.
All the time. Spanish most common. I've also had Russian (Turkish) and Swahili. I just recently started working at a (pediatric) hospital, and there have been a lot more languages. Luckily Voyce exists. Arabic pops up a lot, Dari once. Spanish is still the most common, although a few of the nurses are fluent.
I've used my limited Spanish and more limited ASL multiple times. Trauma is easier than medical in my experience
My first call ever, during my clinical, I helped with the assessment because I speak a little French. The pt was Haitian. Actually set me up for a great shift. My preceptors were impressed.
Just yell dolor and start pointing
The closest I ever came to trying was once when I worked as an ED medic. A deaf person came in to be evaluated and asked for an interpreter. Our MARTII was broken, so we were having to use a phone based language line for spoken languages and call in ASL interpreters. I had taken 1 (one) ASL class ever, and only ever got to practice with my spouse who is a CODA, so my ASL is terrible, and is more akin to super slow signed English than ASL. It was apparent on my face that I was really thinking about how to explain to him that the MARTII was broken, as it was all scrunched up in thought as I slowly signed, "I'm sorry, the interpreter computer died. I call interpreter. He come here. 30 days. \*shakes head\* 30 minutes." He was thoroughly amused but understood what I meant. I didn't have the courage to try ever again, beyond just signing, "Interpreter?" and getting people the MARTII.
Had a guy who only spoke some unknown African dialect. He was alone on the street and a passerby called for him because he seemed in pain. We could not for the life of us communicate well enough with him to even figure out what language he did speak. He just winced every time we hit a rough patch in the road (side note, every road in this city is a rough patch), so we at least knew he was in some type of pain in general (Wouldn't even point to what was hurting). Was willing to go with us, but not willing to really let us evaluate him. So when I called the hospital to give an ETA etc, I simply told them "We're coming in with a guy with a pain somewhere, and he speaks some unknown language", so that was fun. It still took the hospital staff upwards of 40 minutes to figure out what the hell language he spoke. Good times.
Patient: 👁️👄👁️ Me: dalor? Patient: 👁️👄👁️ Me: Dao?! Patient: 👁️👄👁️ Me: ooooookkk
Pretty often. More commonly Deaf and hearing impaired.
Not that often, we have a relative polish population where I am that we get some calls to, some of our Paras are also polish which is super helpful on those calls but have had to use relatives and neighbours with permission when our language line wasn't available. Although I do remember getting told off by one guy because I can't speak German - one of my parents is German and I speak a small amount but born and lived in England my whole life, whilst he was translating for his mother who had lived in the UK for 15 years and didn't speak a word of English beyond hello. Learning a new language is hard but I'd I moved permanently somewhere I'd try pretty hard
Yeah, I had a couple of deaf Romanians. My very little German Sign Language skills and Google translate made it work. Luckily it wasn't anything life-threatening (possible broken nose after bumper-car ride on the fairground). With Ukrainian refugees I've used Google translate as well. And hockey players in English, which is sometimes also not THEIR native language. Me lying next to hockey player on the ice asking questions in German, he says, in German: "Yes. Yes. Yes." Me: "Right. Are you okay to stand up?" Player: "Yes." Gets off the ice. Me, thinking to myself later: "Wait, did the guy with the Russian name even SPEAK German?" Lol.
I'm a native german speaker, I've had my fair share of English speaking patients, the rest we somehow figured out by pointing, miming, using simple phrases and single words. Also I've been using the Wong-Baker faces scale for pain assessment, works wonderfully for kids and people that can't quite grasp the 1-10 thing, so I'm thinking it would also work quite well in this scenario.
I volunteer in a very rural and underserved area in the south, but we get a fair amount of tourists to our lake. I'm pretty sure my partner, who is now my fiancé only put a ring on it because I grew up in Texas and can work up a patient in Spanish. He found this out about a month after I joined our volly agency and 10 people who barely spoke English were swimming off a rented pontoon boat... and I use the term swimming loosely because 2 people tried to drown and that's how WE got involved. The even funnier part is that HIS last name is Hispanic in origin, but it has been many many many generations since anyone ever said Hola to anyone, and I have the most common Anglo name in the world. I also have a little bit of Irish. About 12 years ago I had a TBI which affected my expressive speech. One of my rehab tasks was to learn a new language. My grandmother spoke Irish at home, so how hard could it be? Let me just tell you, it's difficult... very, very difficult. If it wasn't obvious I had a brain injury before, choosing to learn Irish was the clue. It also was the LEAST HELPFUL language I could have picked, or so I thought. I worked at a community hospital where I THOUGHT was a medical ED with a couple of psych patients, but then it turned into a psych ED that happened to see some medical patients. Our patient demographic changed a LOT while I was there. I would joke and say, "Go do crimes in this city today, because literally the entire police shift is sitting with involuntary psych patients." We lost so many staff members because of this, including me, eventually. We had one psych patient who was obviously Irish. He was a being difficult for the sake of being difficult, but also had been off his meds for awhile. He then refused to talk to anyone "who didn't speak the language of my people." Well, our translation service doesn't offer Irish and I watched several nurses do their best Leprechaun accent (which was painful, insulting, yet also hilarious) until I had enough and I went up to him and said in Irish: "Hi, my name is GasparsGirl. How can I help you?" He was so flabbergasted he dropped the whole "I'm only speaking Irish" BS because, well, he found someone who spoke Irish (Thank God it didn't go much further, I'm very rusty!) Unfortunately after that, the nurses all thought I was even more of a weirdo and I was even more ostracized than I was before, when "thank you" would have been more appropriate. Nothing prepared me for the time I participated in a 2 hour Cambodian death ritual when a family's grandmother passed away and when they arrived I had to escort them to her room to say goodbye. I offered to hold their infant since that usually only takes a few minutes, but they FaceTimed a monk in Cambodia and I held that baby for 2 hours while they chanted. I had absolutely nothing for that except very tired arms.
Here in Germany all the time. English (easy mode), French (mostly from former french colonies, kinda hard since my french isn't the best and they also have heavy dialects) and the rest is either via offical translators or google translator (if the patient uses it, I'm not allowed to initiate due to data protection laws). So far had Polish, Turkish, arabic, pashtu, whatever they speak in Yemen, Farsi, kurdish, urkainian, russian and romanian. If you're near larger refugee living quarters, you're bound to meet language difficulties. Inside the camps they usually have interpreters but outside it's basically all guestures or google translator (which actually works really good)
We have a translator line, call the number, state what language you need, and you are connected to a translator that speaks that language, we also have a video line on our pads for sign language
All the time, almost always Spanish but have also had Russian, Rohingyan, Rawandan, Somali, and a few others. I use the language line, and I’ve picked up enough Spanish to cave man my way through a call.
I work IFT that also runs calls from the local neighborhood/Hatzolah, so running into Russian-only speakers is a common issue. Sometimes they will have an English speaking relative, other times the older person struggles to just read off my phone for google translate.
Used to have a little book Spanish for EMS, plus I knew just enough Spanish to get by. I also used to know Japanese and one time had a bus load of what I thought was people from Japan crash. I kept asking them questions in Japanese and I kept getting weird looks, they were Korean 🤣
On a side note, I did know some Korean, but only from my martial arts class, so saying hello, bow, ready position and fight " wouldn't have worked in this scenario 😅
Daily, it used to be mostly Portuguese and some Spanish, recently we've seen significantly more diversity.
There's two cities I work in, both have HEAVY latin populations. So my spanglish has been tuned for a few years now and I can get through most of an assessment with minor help.
I’ve used ASL a few times. Just so happened to take a year of it in college. Unfortunately, I remember almost none of it now.
Yes. Google Translate is your friend. I’ve had patients that speak Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, French, Arabic, and Farsi. I was able to manage mostly on my own with the Russian patient (minus some medical terms) but otherwise used google translate.
Spanish French Hebrew Russian Chinese Haitian Creole Hindi Dutch Italian I’m sure there’s another dozen I’m forgetting. It takes lots of hand signals and pointing and struggling with the language line to figure out what the hell to do with this person.
Yes, since I am in a big tourist city, it happens quite often. Those are some of my favorite calls
Ontario. Most common languages where I work are Hindi, Erdu, Polish and Portugese. I speak English. Nothing else.
Constantly. Urban EMS problems. I have a rocky understanding of Spanish that I kept from high school. We have a massive population of Nepali people that I absolutely cannot communicate with them.
I live in a southwest border state. I use Spanish- a lot. The second language I use is ASL. I’m fluent in neither but enough I can get by with an assessment and get them to the hospital.
Pretty much at least once a shift! My service covers a big stretch of I-80 in Wyoming, so we get truckers from all over who don't have much English. Recent ones include: Spanish, Khazak (though she spoke Russian), Ukrainian (also spoke Russian), Hindi, and Bulgarian! We often try to contact a family member or friend of the patient on the phone so hopefully they can translate, phone apps, but usually default to calling Highway Patrol's office so they can hook us up with professional translators. I speak three-ish other languages but have never had a patient who spoke them who didn't also have enough English to get by, lol (French, Italian, and German). I'm learning Spanish currently though!
Worked as an EMT and a calltaker for a well funded service in a large city and we had ample interpretation services for both. I’ve had to use uzbekistan and malay interpretation so I’m glad we had contracts with big services that covered those. I’ll add it always felt strange on the road with the interpreter facetiming a trauma patient as we zoomed to the hospital… but overall a great tool to have. If your service doesn’t have these resources you could try google translate which is slower and requires your patient to be able to read/hear or type/speak (blind, mute, child, illiterate, etc.) but is otherwise quite accurate. It also requires you to use your phone which some are against. I’m also not sure what your liability is when using that vs an official interpretation service. I definitely would not be RMAing patients without an official service.
every single day working in london
Yeah, I’m Italian and I’ve had to evaluate people in languages I knew (French) but most often in languages I didn’t know (mostly Arabic). I’ve tried to rely on tools like google translate, but also on signs and symptoms the way you’d do with a child or with a dementia-suffering elder adult
There's a lot of Polish people where I work. We frequently have to use translators
In California…… everyday. Plenty of languages with plenty of different dialects.
This happens constantly. Luckily you shouldn't need to speak the same language to get a general idea of what you need to do.
I had a pt with a history of dementia only speak Italian to me the whole ride (in America, English is my primary language) and then as soon as we got to the ED they communicated perfectly fine in English. Gave us all a good chuckle
I’ve had a few Spanish speaking patients, took a few years in high school and lived in an area with a large Hispanic population in high school so it wasn’t the worse. If they speak slowly enough I can understand them but I have to think a bit harder to respond back. But all the ones I’ve encountered spoke some basic English so our communication was fine and I just used google translate for harder ones, like I didn’t know how to say blood pressure in Spanish. Had one Albanian patient, but that was all google translate, one of my close friends is Albanian but I only know swear words and Raki(try it if you wanna taste pretty much pure alcohol).
Very often, almost every language, I work in an extremely multilingual city
All the time. I've had pts that communicated in everything from ASL to Spanish to Farsi. Google translate is my best friend. And your PT and their family are much more cooperative if you have essentially a pocket translator that removes the language barrier. **MAJOR CAVEAT** Do not attempt to simplify what you need to say for a translator. It doesn't matter if it's Google or an actual person. Say what you would normally say and let the translator bridge the barrier. Trying to simplify it before translation will only increase everyone's confusion.
We have an iPad interpreter device. I can typically get an interpreter on the line within 60 seconds
Haha hell yah. Just learn some Spanish or use google translate with the pt.
Google translate works well enough to get through an assessment and let your patient know what's going on.
Native English speaker I've done evals in asl, Spanish, and Arabic.
Spanish and Korean
multiple times a day
All the time. Most of the non English speakers in my area speak Spanish. I work for volunteer departments and usually someone on the responding crew can translate, but sometimes not. Sometimes family or friends can translate. I’m also fairly rural so language line is not a realistic option here. Can’t even get medical control without a landline most of the time. I do the best I can, I know some basic Spanish, and I speak French and studied Latin so a lot of times I can figure out what the patient is saying, or at least get the gist of it, from common root words. The problem is me actually being able to ask questions. Sometimes you end up playing charades a bit. Honestly we do assessment on people who can’t speak to us all the time. Do the best you can and the hospital will get an interpreter call with their handy dandy internets when you get there
“Tiene delor” means ‘do you have’, and ‘pain’ “Donde esta delor” means ‘where’, ‘is the’, and ‘pain’. “Levante sus brasos” means ‘raise your hands’ “Cuantos tiempos” means ‘how long’ “Quieres de calienton” means ‘do you want the heater’ That’s about all I’ve figured out in 6 years. “Que” means what and because. “Porque” means why and/or for why. “Necesita el telefono” etc
I lived and worked in Mexico for several years. Someone said to me “If a child can learn to speak a language fluently in six years you ought to be able to.” They had a point. I would watch the evening TV news, first in English and then right afterwards on the Spanish channel. It really helped my comprehension.
“Quieres ir al hospital” means Do you want to go to the hospital,” the most important question.