Is there any proof of conspiracy?

Language barriers plague hospitals

Demand surges for translators at medical facilities

Both articles discuss poor treatment because of language barriers, having young children translate for their parents, calling up local resturaunts looking for someone to translate what the patient knows about their condition.

Language Barriers to Health Care in the United States

The source of much of the information from the news articles.

Language barriers to health care in the United States.

Research subjects with limited English proficiency: ethical and legal issues.
Why is anyone doing medical testing on someone they cannot communicate with?

Linguist ic disparities in health care access and health status among older adults.


This is just a mere scratch in the ammount of articles to be found on the subject. There are rules about having translators in hospitals, but there aren't near as many as there are supposed to be (neither rules or actual translators).

At the very least, this is just typical beurocratic sloth movemnet on an issue that we've had since we've become a nation. At the worst, we have the government/private researchers looking for test subjects that can't fight back.

Also, this is not only a USA issue, I ran acorss at least one document from Canada.

I'm just begining to look into some of the issue, and would enjoy anyone pulling articles that I'll wind up missing. Thank you.

TO be honest not as far as I can see. No I will preface this observation with the fact that I work at a childrens hospital so the resources tend to a be a bit better. As a transport nurse we frequently run into this barrier. Spanish is the most common we run into in California, But we combat that in a variety of ways:

1) We have concents, maps and the like in Spanish
2) The hospitals have 24 hour coverage of a variety of language translators.
3) ATT has a 24/7 language translation service we call up and use.
4) In an emergency yes, we can and have used a family member but only after the other 3 did not cut it.

The worst language barrier occured when i was a new nurse working in Fresno. We had a family that was deaf, and only spoke Hmong sign language (Sing language is not universal but changes from country to country), One person in the area spoke Hmong and Chinese sign language, se he would convert the Hmong sign language into Chinese sign language, and the last part of the chain was a man who spoke English but could read Chinese sign language. Distcharge teaching was a involved process with the message going from me all the way down the chain and question all the way back up to me. The child had a complex heart defect with lots of medication and the like and you know what the child got the care at home he needed.

The point of that story is to show that it can be done.

Now to play Devils advocate: The other question you should ask is why they do not speak the dominat language? Or, as a health are consumer, would you rather see say less nurses in the ER to get that translator? THis is a question that hospital that are on the edge of bankrupy have to decide.

I expect that.

This may be a big enough reason to make learning English cumpulsary...

Why I'll be looking into this off and on: Coastal Louisiana. My great grandpa died not speaking a word of English, though he understood you pretty well. I've seen what health care looks like here...and sometimes, its bad enough without language barriers.


As I stated, I'm taking my time with this.