Communication Barriers in Everyday Nursing

Communication barriers is something you come across in the nursing profession. It is becoming more common with our multicultural society we live in today. In Lindsay it is not as common to admit a patient into the hospital with a language barrier. A couple of months ago I was faced with a difficult patient who spoke only french. With learning only minimal french in school it was difficult to communicate with this patient. To perform the daily assessments such as the pain assessment, head to toe assessment. Finding out if the patient was hungry, or if they had to use the bathroom all were difficult, not to mention very frustrating for the patient. We had one nurse on the floor that spoke french so she made a sign of some important words we could use to ask the patient questions. Also when she was there she would have conversations with the patient. At times this can be frusrating for the nurse, I can't imagine how frustrated the patient gets. Not to mention how lonely it would be not being able to have a conversation with anyone. I since learned there is a website that you can access and type in anything you want to say in english and it will come up in whatever language you choose. This would be very helpful for any language barrier I face in my nursing career.