Language Barriers in Healthcare

Speaking a different language from that of your doctor is a very scary thing. Medicine itself is mystery enough with all of its terminology and lingo. While it's often hard to understand what's going on with your body in the first place, imagine if you couldn't even talk to your doctor. This is a very vulnerable and scary situation and it is one that many people face on a daily basis, around the world.

The inability to talk to your doctor can cause many problems. For example, in England a German doctor working for the National Health Service misunderstood a British patient because the doctor did not speak proficient English. The patient ended up dying. The NHS is now working to ensure that all doctors prove their English proficiency, whether or not they are members of the EU. This is an important step because it has the potential to prevent many similar mishaps that seem to be common occurrences.

Clearly language barriers in healthcare have devastating results. They also exist in the United States. It is estimated that there are over 50 million people living in the US who are deemed to have limited English-language proficiency. These are people that would require medical translators. But medical translators are often unavailable. These are people who are trained in medical terminology, but also understand colloquial terms and are thus able to properly convey the sentiments and symptoms of the patient to the doctor and vice versa. Since these trained professionals are often unavailable many people must rely on the inexact translation of family members, or simply make do with the little information that can be communicated across the gap when no help is available.

I think that we should work to encourage bilingual healthcare workers in the United States because clearly this language divide between healthcare workers and patients can have dire consequences. Doctors and nurses fluent in both English and Spanish could make a great positive impact on this problem. Clearly we can't plan ahead and have translators for every language in every hospital, but I think it is important that as a society we make this a priority for this is a part of giving people the access to the care they both need and deserve and to make that things literally aren't lost in translation.

I can only imagine how vulnerable these people must feel, hoping and praying that their doctors and understanding what is going on with them. There has to be a level of distrust involved in these communications, whether there is a translator or not, because you want to know that your doctor is hearing exactly what you said. I hope that as a society we can strive to provide better care in this manner, as well as the many others we are discussing in our law making bodies.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7746190/Foreign-doctors-and-nurses-have-to-pass-tough-language-tests-to-work-in-NHS.html

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/In-the-Literature/2008/Jan/Language-Barriers-in-Health-Care--Special-Supplement-to-the-Journal-of-General-Internal-Medicine.aspx

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos175.htm