You’re in a foreign country. You don’t speak the language. You’re in a rented villa not a centrally located hotel. Your mother in law has a fall. She hits her head. She is hurt but you don’t know how bad. How do you call an ambulance? What number do you ring? How do you get hold of a Doctor on a Sunday? You find the telephone number of a medical centre but the woman who answers doesn’t speak English. You understand she is asking your address but she doesn’t recognise it, you spell it out but it’s obvious she doesn’t know where it is. You ring the taxi driver who brought you from the airport he doesn’t speak English but he does understand” medical centre”.
It is Sunday the roads are quiet but will the centre be open? They are open but nobody speaks English. They want an address and phone number. Here or in England? It’s an EEC country and we have a medical card with a reference number which seems to be what’s required.
The very young doctor doesn’t speak English so we mime the accident point to the swelling on the head, the bloody nose, the bruised hand, arm and shoulder. We have brought in with us my mother in laws tablets to show the doctor what medication she is on but in our hast we just picked up the dosage tray which separates out her tablets into am and pm each day for the week. The doctor recognises antibiotics and blood pressure tablets but wants to know the names, we haven’t a clue. We have a prescription but we left it in the villa.
They take her blood pressure and say it is high. They take a pin prick of blood using a hand held machine. I guess they are testing for sugar levels. They give her some tablets to bring down the blood pressure and indicate we should wait for twenty minutes and they will take her blood pressure again. Half an hour later they take her blood pressure and say it is down “a little”. The word “vomit” and a finger waved in front of her eyes leads us to understand that if she is sick or suffers blurred vision over the next 24 hours we should take her to hospital.
We get the taxi back to the villa. We are reassured but anxious. What if she is sick in the night? She isn’t.
This experience got me thinking what would it be like if you turned up in A&E and didn’t speak English?
Blair McPherson is author of An Elephant in the Room an equality and diversity training manual and Equipping managers for an uncertain future both published by www.russellhouse.co.uk