Use of English language in hospitals

[harm_less]

The use of interpreters is already common in patient to health professional environments. The issue being dealt with in this instance is inter-staff communications, as I have tried to illustrate.

The biggest problem in this discussion is that the all too active keyboard warriors are conflating patient interactions with the professionals' communications among the medical staff which are concise and precise by necessity in an environment that is often under extreme time constrains with a necessity for accuracy and full transmission of patient details than can at times change quickly. As you can imagine, the need for interpreters for communications between health workers is not a workable scenario, hence the need to restrict such communications to a common language.

If they can manage to have interpreters for staff/patient communication then surely it can't be much more difficult to provide adequate means of communication between medical staff who speak different languages, whatever that might be. And really if they balk at possible cost, then they might want to consider the cost of possible consequences, & not neccessarily just  the  financial cost.

What a ridiculous concept. Pair an interpreter to every staff member who lacks basic communication skills in English? Who do you suggest should pay for all those extra health system related employees?

An interpreter can be arranged in advance for non-English patient consultations but this presents added expense and delays to a health system that is coming apart at the seams as it is. How about we ensure that all staff have sufficient English speaking and comprehension skills which should be part and parcel of their immigration terms and job description? Seems a lot cheaper to enforce existing protocols than to throw more money at the health sector payroll, especially as the government is busy cutting the guts out of that sector currently.