bluebayou

Dunno what this has to do with ethics; to me, it is just plain old common sense.

But the practical reality is that no hospital, outside of Harvard, has the money to train and staff the hundreds of translators that will be required 24/7 to fulfill this [ethical?] obligation. And, add on top of that, expecting the provider to know the "nuances" of the languages that boys in the hood use is just plain silly, IMO.

Do they work nights? Weekends? Holidays? Or, was this lecture/practicum given during a day class?

Well Doh! (as Home would say). Do the advocates really believe that the med students are that dense that they don't get it the first time, or second time, or....?

I concur that having a foreign language medical terminology is a HUGE plus. But not sure how practical it is in every ER in the country, 24/7.

Absent medical terminology, some language ability is better than none, IMO.

Perhaps not, but the opposite is also true. Being a encyclopedia of foreign medical terms will not help the provider understand the basics either. And it is the basics that form the cultural assumptions, not a defib.

i_wanna_be_Brown

When medical translators are not available at my school's hospital, we use a translator phone service. We dial a number, tell them what language we want, and then a person translates over the phone. Obviously not as good as an in person translator (the use of which we get tested on as 2nd years) but if we can't do it ourselves, it's better than using a random person on the floor or a relative.

I don't know spanish so I don't know if this is a "some is better than none" case but one of the examples they gave us was this one from New Joint Commission Standard Defines Medical Interpreters

There have been a few highly publicized incidents of medical interpretation gone wrong, one being the 1980 case of Willie Ramirez, a Spanish-speaking teenager from southern Florida. Ramirez reported feeling dizzy and having a headache—the result of an intracerebellar hemorrhage—to doctors at an area hospital.

However, because, among other reasons, he and his family insisted he was intoxicado, his original ailment was diagnosed as an intentional drug overdose. The word intoxicado in Spanish, however, can mean feeling dizzy or nauseous. Ramirez became a quadriplegic as the result of the misdiagnosis.

kristin5792

^We have Blue Phones too, but they seem pretty cumbersome. Clearly, trained translators there in person are the best option. We also have a bunch of signs and posters around that say in a variety (50+?) languages "Point to your language and we will get you a translator" (this sentence is written in each of the languages, and the English word for those languages is printed next to each one). Allegedly they're helpful when patients come in and no one knows what language they're speaking (doesn't happen very frequently).

Spirit is a great book. Terribly sad, in my opinion, but a great message nonetheless.