Language Lessons Anyone?

In the past three week s I’ve had to treat two patients who speak little to no English and have varying degrees of dementia. This definitely produces a challenge when you’re trying to teach them exercises. One of these patients spoke some English and I spoke a very minimal amount of his language, so to communicate with him I tried to use what words I knew as well as a lot of demonstration. My supervisor said as well to get him to teach me some of his language by saying a word and asking him what it is in his language. This seemed to work well as I think it helped to form a good working relationship and he was appreciative of the effort to speak his language as opposed to just trying to speak English louder. The other patient spoke no English and had quite bad dementia, this made it even more difficult. To tackle this patient we used pictures of exercises and also the daughter to translate to her mother what we wanted her to do. Demonstration was also a very big help in communicating the exercises to her.

Treating patients who don’t speak English is really quite a challenge as we tend to rely quite heavily on our verbal skills to communicate, but situations like these make you be creative and employ all those other communication skills we’ve got buried deep down somewhere. I also found it quite interesting as well, that even though these two patients were relatively similar in the way they presented, they really did need to be managed differently. Treating these patients has made me think about all those other communication skills we have and made me wonder how much more effective could I be as a physiotherapist if I used those skills with patients who do speak fluent English. After all, every person is different in the way they learn, whether it be visually or verbally or practically. I feel now, that sometimes I tend to get so focussed on the fact that I need to teach this person these exercises and I do it the best way I know how, to talk. But maybe if I stopped for a moment and considered what the best way is for the patient and used that form of communication instead, my treatment would be more effective.

I feel that now, in the future, whether I’m treating patients who don’t speak English or do speak English, I will take more consideration of how they learn, not just how I like to teach.