No Empuje

My Spanish speaking skills are poor, that's just a fact. I learned most of my Spanish from the kitchen crew the summer that I worked at the Crab House and from the door at 7-Eleven. The kitchen guys were from Guatamala and taught me the basics of communication which were "caliente," "gusta / no gusta" and "no bueno." I missed out on understanding how essential knowing the Spanish language was while I was telling important business executives how to avoid compliance violations at Ernst & Young. It just didn't seem all that important at the time. But now that I am catching more hispanic babies than ever, I kind of wish I knew more. I can get by, that's for sure. And I do try to learn at least one Spanish word or phrase every time I take care of a hispanic patient, but at this rate, it will take me years to put together a cohesive and grammatically correct paragraph. We have these fancy translator phones to communicate with patients but they are more trouble to use when I just have a few simple questions or things to tell patients. So I use my head to beat the system.

Enter Google Translate. Since there are computers in each of our labor rooms, I just log into Google Translate, type what I want to say, and then read the translation to the patient. It works like a charm. This is why I will never learn Spanish. I just read what the screen says and as long as I phrase things so that I receive yes or no responses, I am golden.

Yesterday I exceeded even my own expectations when I found the "listen" button under the translation. This little gem provides a female voice translation with all the correct pronunciations. Follow me - the computer speaks Spanish to the patient. It's brilliant. I used it to explain to the patient what the plan of care would be, including a cervical exam followed by the doctors breaking her water. She nodded and stated "si" when I said "comprende?" (see, I still use my basic communication skills) I was so excited that I came out of the room and said to the nurses, "guess what I just learned?" I proceeded to tell them about the verbal translator when one of the eavesdropping doctors said "You still have to learn Spanish. You should really know the language." And then the little medical student pipped up and said "Yeah, and you have to be careful with google translate because sometimes it is incorrect."

My response: "Well, you're right. I could have just told her she was about to birth a unicorn. But she was okay with that."

And that is blog post number two about how I outsmart the ridiculous medical community of which I am a part.