Last night I had a patient whose
first language was not English. In fact it was Spanish. I know a
little Spanish. Pretty much my extent, is to introduce myself and to ask
“how are you, are you in pain, and do you need anything?”
The patient was admitted for necrotizing
fascitis of his leg. The doctors had to operate and they ended up
performing bilateral below the knee amputations. Although the patient was
able to speak English enough for us to communicate, it was very broken and
mixed with Spanish. Although the patient was very nice, and didn’t ever
ask for anything, I was a little upset about the language difference ( I
couldn’t find a blue phone to help interpret) and I felt that I wasn't
effectively caring for my patient.
As I was changing his dressings, we
were talking. He was telling me about his kids and family. I could
tell that he was in pain but he kept denying and saying he didn’t want the pain
medicines. I teased him a little about being a macho man, and trying to
show off for me. We laughed and got through the dressings. As I was
leaving the room, he called me back in and thanked me for taking the time to
talk with him while I did the dressings. He said that he felt like
sometimes the language barrier makes people forget to talk to him because they
get scared they won’t be able to understand him. I told him I enjoyed
talking with him and getting to know a little about him. As I turned to
walk out again, he stopped me and said “no se
preocupe por las cosas pequeñas.” I asked him to translate for me,
but he had turned over and was pretending to sleep.
I was busy for the rest of the
night so I didn’t have time to figure out what it meant, but when I finally
caught a few minutes and looked it up I saw it roughly translates to “don’t
sweat the small stuff”. I had to stop and smile. Without even
knowing it my patient had told me the very words that I repeat to myself a
million times on my twelve hour shifts. It made me smile and realize that
even though there was a slight language barrier that did not stop important
communication from happening when needed.
Many times, we freak out a little
when we hear that we are going to have a non-English speaking patient.
However, I have learned that you don’t always need to have the same language in
order to say and hear what is important.
