What do you think???

[galaxy781]

Hi all,

I came across a situation the other day and was wondering if anyone else might have an opinion on this subject.

I am in nusing school and one of my classmates is from Korea. Now being a minority myself (im Japaneese) I am not trying to sound predjudiced...but she is a transfer student from Korea and has been in the US for a bit (that is what she told the class). Her english is not very good and she has a very hard time understanding the instructor, ie. she said "I not speak english well can you go slow or repeat things?" i say that as a direct qoute. I was wondering do any of you kind of have a problem with her going into nursing? I mean its great what she is doing but if she cant communicate efficiently with her patients do you think that compromises her patients well being, ie do you think she could misunderstand or not understand and make a mistake?

what do you guys think, i was a little worried, i thought to myself if she cant even understand our teacher that well then will she be able to understand and fully comprehend what the patients are saying?

[fergus51]

good point, what is your original language? i see you are pretty fluent, how long did it take you, if you dont mind me asking? any suggestions on what i can do to help my classmate that will be most effective in helping her learn the language?

Oh no, my first language is English and then French (I took both at school until I graduated). I thought being billingual, that learning languages was pretty easy and I never understood how people could live here and not learn English well. Then I was an exchange student after high school and lived with a family in the europe who spoke almost no English. I took courses to learn the language and was pretty immersed. It took me a good year to be able to communicate well, and I still had a strong accent and pretty poor grammar (slavic languages are really hard! Polish, Czech, Slovak all have really complex grammar rules). Until I did that, I really had no idea how hard it is to learn a new language as an adult. You can't imagine how exhausting and frustrating it is to spend so much energy on communication. I've never had more headaches in my life! There is no way to really understand it unless you have done it before. I was lucky that an American lived in my town and we became friends. It gave me a much needed break. If I didn't have some chance to speak English I would have gone nuts.

I think the best thing for learning a new language is practice in conversation. Just going out to the pub with friends is what worked best for me:)

[Cassinia]

I've been in nursing for many years and everytime there's a nursing shortage, there are more nurses coming to this country from other countries. I have had to deal with many nurses who are not fluent with English. And, being hearing impaired, it made it that much more difficult for me. And, yes, there were problems w/doctors and patients understanding them. Some patients would request not to have the foreign nurses take care of them because of the communication barrier. I've seen doctors complain to head nurses and DONs because the nurses couldn't understand them to take the orders. And, late at night, the md doesn't want to be on the phone repeating himself a number of times (I speak from experience).

Anyway, we're in a nursing shortage so expect to see all kinds of students, and nurses, from other countries. It's just the way it is. All I can say, having problems myself in school because of the hearing loss, is be patient with her, help her as much as you can, and try to include her in other activities not school related. A person can learn a lot of English in outside activites.

And, by the way, there's English and American English, which is harder to learn since our language doesn't follow rules as strictly as English. Face it, we're a country of mixed breeds and our language shows this. :chuckle