Earlier this week, the Georgia Department of Human Resources threw out a rule Hall County put on the books for their medical employees that forbade them to speak anything other than English to each other.
I can’t find the original article on the subject, but here are some editorials, the first in favor of ending the rule, the second in favor of the rule itself:
I don’t really understand how people can be in favor of a rule that doesn’t allow people to speak to each other in their own language, even and especially in a medical environment. How can two Spanish speaking employees harm their patient by discussing treatment in Spanish as opposed to English? It’s absurd.
I was just curious to see what fellow Dopers thought about the matter. Sorry if this post is incoherent, it’s late, I’ve got a migraine hangover, etc.
In a medical environment I can think of some reasons why at least all professional conversations take place in one language. Pretty much anything with life or death consequences you want people to be using one language just for the sake of preventing misunderstanding or delays from repetition.
<< How can two Spanish speaking employees harm their patient by discussing treatment in Spanish as opposed to English? It’s absurd. >>
For example, if they spoke Spanish in front of the patient so that the patient didn’t understand what they were saying, that could cause severe stress to the patient.
Generally, rulings on this type of “English only” rule have supported the notion that such a rule is OK if limited to work situations. The classic case was an English only rule because the workers were making derogatory comments about the supervisor, who didn’t understand Spanish. The company argued in cout that it was important that the supervisor understand what the workers were talking about when on the shop floor, and thus the ruling supported the “English only” rule in that instance.
I hugely appreciate the skill and expertise of the many non-native-speaking doctors that leave their homelands to come to the UK and work long, stressful, underpaid and underappreciated hours for the NHS. However, it is not only distressing for a patient when the doctor does not speak good English, it can be potentially life-threatening. Accent and pronunciation are also a problem.
Over here, I had to visit a (very competent) doctor who unfortunately did not have a very good command of Arabic or English. I think he was from India or Pakistan. Even though I knew the universal, Latin name for my complaint, he couldn’t understand my accent. It took several attempts for the (Indian but more English-fluent) nurse to get it through to him what I was trying to say. I nearly ended up having to have a lot of lengthy, unnecessary tests and delayed treatment because I couldn’t explain the word “cystitis” to him. “See-see-is” was sort of how he pronounced it.
So yeah, I can understand the importance of this rule. However I think in private conversations, or non-work-related conversations, they should be able to speak whatever they like. And if an English doctor wants to work in Spain eg, they should be equally prepared to speak fluent enough Spanish not to have life-threatening communication gaps.
What happens when you break your wrist and your doctor doesn’t speak your language?
How does this invalidate people who weren’t born in America? There are a lot of non-americans who speak good english, and a lot of americans who don’t.
In situations where rapid communication is necessary and miscommunication can lead to death, there should be a standard language. It could be esperanto for all I care, I’d just prefer that the nurses, doctors, and patients can all communicate with each other without a translator.
First of all the golden rule when inmigrating to a country is to learn their language.
Second, everytime people start “regulating” this kind of issue I start thinking of racism, inmigration control, etc. They will learn english give the guys sometime. And anectdote comes to my mind, when my father was a kid (around 1960) there places in Buenos Aires, or cities like Mar del Plata were nobody spoke spanish, they spoke Italian. Now they have blended in, everyone speaks spanish (although it is heavily influenced by italian).
Third a question, if there is not an official language in U.S.A. could you pass a law that was written in say spanish? In argentina it would be null (in fact inconstitutional, because according to article 3 spanish is our official law).
And I am willing to bet that he doesn’t. Because not all “educated individuals” speaks english, there are many languages in the world to study. French, Italian, Spanish, portuguese, latin and greek comes to my mind as the most important.
Actually I didn’t think of writing it down. But in all honesty - most people here are quite literate and we still make mistakes - how many people generally though can spell things like myocoxic splenotoid haemmoraghic strephthalma?
Estilicon, I think Monty may have meant that since those countries were colonized by the English empire, and since (at least in India) English is one of the languages taught in the schools, it would be correct to think that a college-graduated individual that went thru a lot of years of schooling at least has some grasp in the English language.
I don’t completely agree with that statement, but I understand why would someone think it is correct.
You guys are going way off on a tangent here. The OP had nothing to do with doctors not knowing how to communicate with their patients - it’s about how medical employees communicate with each other. And surely it’s preferable for all concerned, if they’re sharing vital medical information, that they’re allowed to do so in the language both are most comfortable in?
Estilicon: Please, please educate yourself some. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, and Greek all have no use in getting by in educated society in either India or Pakistan; however, the English language is essential. Although Urdu is the official language of Pakistan, English is listed by my Encarta encyclopedia as one of the languages in use there. India, on the other hand, lists Hindi and English as official languages.
Thank you for remembering the issue.
Although you may have a point in that if two Spanish-speaking employees can communicate w. each other more efficiently they may improve service, in something like health care I can imagine that it would cause some stress on a patient, already mildly baffled by the medical terminologies (and/or insurance billing terminology) flying about the room, to hear the staff switch into another language altogether. I have no problem with workplace rules requiring that in a public-contact environment there be a standard language, and that it be that of the majority of the clientele. OTOH, it seems to me completely pointless to forbid Guadalupe the IT Manager from asking Francisco in Accounting, in Spanish, to hold off printing until she fixes the server. And I would be very much against a rule that a non-English-speaking customer is out of luck.
ON other issues:
Karl, you are right in being skeptical about the expectation of English from the educated classes in the former Empire. You know how effectively our Public Schools here perform at 12 years of giving ESL courses to everybody And though it is true our professionals in engineering and medicine do much of their education in English, it’s often just “book English” and can be hard to understand when spoken.
Estilicon, the USA has no national official language per se, however AFAIK (and any Dopers with direct knowledge should correct me if I’m wrong) the Laws and Rules governing the functioning of Congress, Office of the President, and Federal Courts make English their standard language of legal record. In the case of the courts, translators are provided for those who do not speak the language but the legal record is written down in English. (BTW this gets pretty absurd in the San Juan Federal court, since the judges, jurors, attorneys, prosecutors and witnesses are usually ALL puertorriqueños… meanwhile, PR’s “state” – you’d call them provincial – courts do work in Spanish).
Another reason that Congress would not in the near future change its laws and rules to be able to write a Federal Law exclusively in, say, Spanish is the simple practical fact that the majority of the Congress is Anglophone and would not vote for something they can not read (they do often vote for things they do not understand, but that’s a different thread). And finally it would run into other constitutional questionings, in that you would be denying access to that law to the majority of the population.
I think it’s a sensible approach to have the majority language at any particular time be the legal language of record: I can even understand official common languages for the sake of standardization of communications and law if there are numerous large different cultural groups within the state (e.g. Hindi in India; KiSwahili in Tanzania); but I just don’t believe in their application to the exclusion of “minority” languages (as the more radical English-Onliers seek), nor in their use as a tool to enforce a particular “national identity”.
Jrdelirious, thanks. I agree with you “access of justice” is the key here, then I think english is, in a way, U.S.A de facto official language. At least untill another language is spoken by the majority.
Incidentally don’t you think that if your southern states (were there are a lot of spanish speakers) laws are not published in both languages they could be declared unconstitutional?
Monty: Your problem is, in my humble opinion, that you tend to think in absolutes terms. In india an Pakistan perhaps statistically an educated person second language is english but it is not true in every case. Besides every other language you speak makes you more educated (I seem to recall that you speak many unusual languages).
What if the doctor isn’t allowed to speak your language? The county in question is one-fifth Latino, and in that part of Georgia thousands of new immigrants arrive from south of the border each year.
With this large influx of both workers and patients who speak languages other than English it seems unreasonable that they wouldn’t be able to speak them. I can understand that it could stress out a patient who only knew English, but simply firing someone for speaking a different language while on the job is ridiculous.
Originally posted by zen101:
Good point. It’s the threat of firing that bothers me, however. And, from what I can infer from the articles, the directive wasn’t limited to professional conversation and simply referred to on-the-job communication.
And your problem is that you speak of stuff you know absolutely nothing about and pretend that it’s the truth. Sadly, you’re mistaken. Pakistan’s and India’s educated societies actually use English. The fact that it’s not that way in your country does not mean that it’s not that way in the rest of the world.
