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Language Barrier
After a trip to Mexico and talking to the Firefighters over there, or "Bomberos" as they call themselves, I became curious as to know...
How many of you have ever been faced with a language barrier, and how did it affect the incident?
What do you do if you're faced with someone who speaks little to no English in an emergency, who do you call?
Does your department carry those quick reference sheets made specially for EMS and Fire?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on -
How many of you have ever been faced with a language barrier, and how did it affect the incident?
What do you do if you're faced with someone who speaks little to no English in an emergency, who do you call?
Happens all the time, takes longer to do an assessment and get info, but you do what you can. In many cases someone does speak English, and we will have that person interpret. If there is someone on the crew who can speak the language, guess what they are doing? When we call the hospital we will notify them to have an interpreter ready. We do have some of the quick reference sheets, but don't always need to use them.
The key though is to try and understand what language is being used. We have many here who speak Spanish, so it is a common language and most of us know some phrases. However, we had a call for a man down and he couldn't speak English, nor Spanish, nor German and we tried to calm him as much as possible, use sign language/actions to try and show what we were doing etc. While still trying to talk to him etc, someone just said "You par Ruskie?" and "dah" was the response. Turns out the guy was a Russian immigrant and the hospital was able to contact an interpreter.
For a fire situation, the language barrier isn't much of an issue.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on -
I have yet to have a "language barrier" that could not be dealt with through the victims kids, relatives, friends or just using sign language. Sick people belong in the hospital and generally speaking, they understand that you are the one who is there to facilitate that. Anything you can do to facilitate a smooth communication is nothing but helpful. This includes understanding basic sign language. Don't count out the folks out there that cannot hear. Your departments or response area demographics dictate what other languages you need to be prepared for.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on -
Using the children is about the best - if they're old enough! But what is this Mike? "This includes understanding basic sign language". Simple gesturing and hoping for the best? Not being funny, being the normal curious me...
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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Learning 26 letters... that's all you have to do to enable communicating with folks that cannot hear, which includes the ability to verbally communicate with you. This is worth saving and carrying with you. You never know...
When I went through paramedic school, the doctor that ran the school had a child that was totally non-hearing. The importance of being able to communicate with hearing impaired folks was identified and basic sign language including the alphabet and some medical questions were taught.
I've actually used the skill set of sign language signing on a handful of calls, including delivering a baby from a very silent young woman who was concerned whether or not her baby was crying... it was. Life is good being able to use basic communication tools to do our jobs.
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Permalink Reply by Heatherlicious Birthday Central on -
Excellent examples - and yes, even basic sign language gestures beyond the alphabet will come in handy many times in life.
And writing out words on paper works well when a person has a mouth or throat injury or airway management devices in place. Served me well on dozens of scenes. Pencils work even better than pens in some environments.
I know that some variation on charades also works in a pinch.
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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I see what you mean MIke - but aren't there a variety of these methods of communicating? In other words no world standard? I'm certain I've read about that... I have never considered learning this type of 'talking', I know nothing about the method used here. I wonder if our paramedics learn it... No idea about that either, I work with the paras at incidents but that's as far as it goes, what with ambulance being a seperate govt. organisation.
Anyway. I think that for non English speaking people (we are getting more and more of them here, and many don't seem to think that English need be learned) then Heather's comment about charades might be right on the mark!
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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How many of you have ever been faced with a language barrier, and how did it affect the incident?
It can be awkward, but we manage.
What do you do if you're faced with someone who speaks little to no English in an emergency, who do you call?
We'd call dispatch and ask them to organise it :) Hasn't happened to me yet.
Does your department carry those quick reference sheets made specially for EMS and Fire?
No.
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Permalink Reply by Vic Silverfish on -
That's how I learned most of my Spanish.
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Permalink Reply by Forrest Post on -
I kind of figured you would all say that you just use children or relatives...But where I'm at we have a couple streets in our jurisdiction that are nothing but Mexicans, and just so happens that NO ONE on Northwest Ambulance speaks anything other than English.
So for about an hour I heard dispatch and the medics calling for an interpreter at 3am until they finally just took her to the hospital guessing that's what she wanted.
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Permalink Reply by DUST on
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My dept. has an education reimbursement program, so I have taken a few semesters of college level Spanish. I have used it several times on scene and while I'm not as fluent as I's like to be, in the end I've been able to get a lot more iinformation than we would have otherwise. Especially helpful on medical runs.
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Permalink Reply by Derek R. on -
I was just about to suggest something similar, Dust.
Why, then Forrest, don't you take it upon yourself to learn the necessary language enough so that you may be able to get basic info and relate basic instructions that pertain to your field of work.
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