“Norfolk hospital organises lessons for foreign nurses to avoid cultural misunderstandings with patients.
Foreign nurses are receiving a crash course in euphemism after bewildered patients expressing the wish to “spend a penny” found themselves being escorted to a hospital shop. Norfolk’s Queen Elizabeth hospital has organised special “adapting to life in Norfolk” sessions for Portuguese staff whose otherwise excellent English results in too-literal translations of everyday expressions. Patients, particularly the elderly, face being met with incomprehension when complaining of “feeling under the weather”, suffering “pin and needles” or experiencing problems with their “back passage”.
Local expressions such as “blar”, meaning to cry, and “mawther”, meaning “young woman”, are also likely to see mystified nurses flicking in vain through conventional phrasebooks. The distinct Norfolk brogue provides another linguistic obstacle for the recruits hired by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS trust. “One of the things people from overseas had difficulty with was our euphemisms such as ‘spend a penny’,” said a hospital spokesman. “In the past some of the new recruits from abroad, when patients used the expression, were taking people to the hospital shop.”
“They all speak exceptional English, but that doesn’t necessarily cover the type of English spoken in Norfolk. We have many different phrases and sayings in this part of the world. A lot of patients are elderly and use what can only be described as quaint phrases and descriptions, especially for body parts and common illnesses.” The hospital has organised two-hour induction courses in dialect, idiom and colloquialism, covering phrases such as “spick and span”, “higgledy-piggledy”, “la-di-dah” and “tickled pink”. Other useful terms on the agenda are “jim jams”, “a cuppa” and “elbow grease”. Nurses are being asked to write down any confusing phrases they hear on the wards so they can be discussed in follow-up meetings.”
Read more at The Guardian (Thanks @UKgnome)
Well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!
When I was a U.S. citizenship tutor for immigrants at a community center, almost all of them expressed frustration with American euphemisms. This will likely be very useful for the nurses.
Making a mountain out of a mole-hill if you ask me.
Ooh, ‘euphemisms’, hate that word as i always somehow confuse it with ‘aphorisms’.
Anyhoo :… How do you Sms- and euphemi?
What would have been exceptionally useful is if The Guardian had seen fit to explain to readers what “spend a penny” meant. The phrase is in the title, and appears twice in the body, each time without explanation. The journalist is covering a story about euphamistic misunderstandings, operating under the false belief that everyone reading the article knows all of the euphamisms!
Paging Dr. Irony…
I am involved with teaching a course at one of the university medical schools to give overseas student doctors similar help. I think that if we don’t give them this help then we are failing them. Also, I don’t think that patients should be having to struggle to make themselves understood by healthcare professionals. So I think this project is totally appropriate and a very good thing!
I was a nurse once.
The patient experience is a fundamental aspect of the therapeutic process. If a patient does not feel understood or cared for, it damages the perception of the whole process. They can have wonderful surgery and top-class after care but if the nurse is rude they will leave with a negative experience.
Many people I cared for seemed to think that the influx of migrant labour into nursing would damage care standards. In my experience, many non-English nurses have very high standards, including a knowledge of technical language.
The inability to understand euphemisms can lead the patient to assume that the nurse has poor English, when in fact that is often far from the case.
So, a simple bit of training with a very important outcome.
Mike,
I totally agree with you. They mention “spend a penny” twice but no explanation when the article is about confusing euphemisms. It most defniitely is an irony. And I sure don’t know what that means!
*what the article is talking about. Sorry
I’m assuming ‘spend a penny’ is a euphemism for using the toilet. You know, because public toilets generally charge a small amount of money, and because really — what else is there in a hospital that requires both a nurse to help you get somewhere, and a euphemism?
For those confused, “spend a penny” means to go to the toilet. See http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/spend-a-penny.html
So you can imagine how confusing it’d be if you asked for the toilet and were taken to the shop, which was apparently sans toilet!
How can you work in a hospital and not understand euphemisms or double-entendres? Surely Carry-on films should be part of the training. Bloody foreigners, coming over here, misunderstanding our nonsensical drivel…
While it seems a good idea to provide training on these phrases, these are not expressions which exist only in Norfolk! These are nationwide expressions and are bound to confuse foreign nurses over the whole of the UK!
I still think the idea is a bit far-fetched.
Working as a nurse I’ve heard some euphemisms in my time. But even though Im from the UK I sometimes have to stop and think ‘okay that means…..?’, in particular some of the one’s the ‘culchies’ or the folk from the more rural areas in Northern Ireland use are unknown to a city girl like me.