Found in translation

She was old. She was Colombian. She was scared.

She was my patient.

And she barely spoke a word of English.

According to handover she could say “yes”, “no”, “hello”‘, and “thank you”. And that was about it. “Hello” is always good. “Thank you” is always welcome; and let’s face it, “yes” and “no” are pretty-much useless out of any understandable context. This was going to be a lilttle problematic. I’m a firm believer in the power of mime as a method of communication, but I would really like to understand what my patients are saying.

The only Spanish I knew was from what I had picked up watching American TV, and from a 60 second Spanish lesson that I got many years ago from a South American nursing home AIN. Somehow, I thought that a Speedy Gonzalez “Andelay, andelay! Yee Ha! Yee Ha!” would not be approriate. Nor would an Arnie-esque “Hasta la vista, baby”. The only nurse on the floor that actually knew some Spanish, didn’t want to talk to the patient, because she reckoned that she couldn’t remember much and didn’t want to look stupid. Fortunately, if it’ll help my patient, I’m quite happy to look stupid.

So I went over to her and bumbled through a greeting. “Beunas tardes, Senora”.

Well, the look of fear on her face evaporated. She lit up and started babbling something in Spanish. She was excited. Finally someone was speaking to her in a language that she could understand. To my shame, I had absolutely no idea of what she was saying.

I stopped her. “Perdano, Senora. Me no hablo Espanola.”

She looked a little confused at this. And said something else that I couldn’t understand. Again, I apologised and let her know that I didn’t understand Spanish. “Perdano, Senora. Me no hablo Espanola.”

I told her my name and that I was her nurse. “Me llamo, Penguin. Me enfermero. Me su emfermero.”

She then said something that I woud like to think was the Spanish equivalent of, “but Penguin, you speak so wonderfully, I can’t believe for a second that you are not a native Spanish speaker!”

This was obviously a little confusing for her, so I set about demonstrating my exceedingly limited command of her native tongue, by listing what I could say.

“Buenos días
Buenas tardes
Buenas noches
Sí
No
Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco cinco seis (I am pretty fly…)
Me llamo Penguin (I learned that from Family Guy)
Hasta la vista, baby (in my best Arnie impersonaltion)
Uno momenta por favor
¿Cómo estás? (Thank you Scrubs)
Me casa, su casa
Gringo
Muchos gracias, me amigo
Adiós”

During this, I kept pointing at the TV. The penny finally dropped with my impression of Speedy Gonzalez, “Ariba ariba! Andelay, andelay! Yee Ha! Yee Ha!”, complete with improvised sound effects of Speedy running away (turned out it was appropriate). She realised that I coulld only say a couple of phrases, but appeared far more at ease. I did a set of obs, and had to dig a little deeper into my repoitoire, for “where does it hurt?”

“Senora, donde duele?”

She pointed to her head.

“Poco o grande?”

She indicated it was a medium headache. I grabbed her some paracetamol and some codeine and kept bumbling, trying to tell her that I had some medicine for her “Estas medicinos para su….”

She took the meds, and looked visably more comfortable. She took my hand and said, “Gracias, gracias”. Truly, I was the great communicator!

Fast forward to the next day. I was working in a different area, but stopped by to see how she was doing. She had a couple of visitors including one bohemoth of a son. He was a unit. She saw me and excitedly started blurting something out in Spanish to her family. I said “hola”, and her son asked me if I was the nurse who was doing the pisstake Speedy Gonzales impersonation to his mum. I wasn’t sure where this was going… He then asked if I would step outside the room. More of an instruction than a request. Uh oh.

We went out into the hallway were he became less scary. “So Nurse Speedy… I want to thank you for all that you did for my mother yesterday. She can’t understand much English, and I wanted to say that I appreciate your attempts to talk to her in Spanish. You’re the first person that has tried any Spanish with her.”

That was a relief. He went on to say that his mum had told him that my Spanish was less than spectacular, but she could understand what I was trying to say and was really grateful that someone actually tried to communicate with her.

We ended up discharging her home to her family. Happy endings for all.

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I guess the moral of the story relates to how one communicates with one’s patients. Fundamentally, the provision of good nursing care is dependant on being able to communicate with your patients. A trained monkey can hand out pills and wipe bums, but it takes a bit more to be a good nurse.

We live in a multi-cultural society, where we come into contact with people from different cultures – not all of whom can speak English. Now for a moment, imagine how scary it would be if you were plonked into an alien environment, such as a hospital, and couldn’t understand what everyone was saying or make yourself understood. If you’ve ever been lost in the back streets of Beijing, you might relate… But back at the ranch…

Granted most communication is non-verbal, but it really doesn’t hurt to know a few words in another language. We can’t be expected to speak and understand every language that our patients speak, but knowing a few words in a foreign language shows respect for your patients and is a great ice-breaker. If your Spanish and Mandarin is as bad as mine, you’ll at least make your patients smile.

Adiós amigos.