refugees in the hospital: Difficult understanding

Anyone who goes with open eyes through life, not around it comes to the question of her own opinion on refugee policy. People open I was raised. My mother was always with, when it came to the maintenance of contacts to all the neighbors. Multi-culturally, the neighborhood in which I grew up.

Multi-cultural is also the care – how Working in all of the social Professions. But what is multi-cultural care in the clinic everyday? First of all, is spoken in the social Professions of TRANS-cultural instead of multi-culturally. While with multi-cultural the diversity of cultures is meant, says the TRANS-cultural care, the effort, between cultures a good connection. There are numerous publications to help shed stereotypes and to remain fair.

Conflicts discuss

But why all this special attention? Causes of disease and their treatment are not different from German or? May be. But the care of sick people is first and foremost a communicative profession. Patients speak with foreign roots of English, you can talk about conflicts and find a solution.

So it is a recurring discussion in the care, how many visitors are allowed to enter a multi-bed room. In the southern culture is familiar circles of cohesion in the families of other than we need him. It comes more visit at once and most of it is much more lively. Disease doesn’t seem so Quiet to run, such as in the case of Northern Europeans, the feeling by many of the visitors rather stressed.

Refugees in psychiatry

A huge Problem for the care of it, however, is when patients and relatives do not speak English. This is due to the current immigration situation in the clinic everyday more and more. In the somatic, i.e. where physical diseases are treated in the same way as in psychiatry.

On my Station, a young adult, either a personality disorder or psychological Trauma suffered. While personality disorders are caused by problems in the toddler time, a so-called trauma disorder result in later on its cause. For example, the strain of an escape.

And if the communication doesn’t work?

Since last year, young men and women come more and more to us that do not come with the experience on your escape and mental symptoms develop. Most of them speak no English and hardly any English. The staff at the care as a first point of contact is to rely on Gestures, facial Expressions and written translation assistance. It’s a sign, for example, in several languages, the sentence: “I’m in pain!”. But many refugees are not able to read or the existing rates of translation help are not enough.

Scheduled individual meetings with therapists and staff of the care we are able to hire interpreters. Currently, these are in demand but very often do not have time immediately. The exchange is held pushed in one hour per week. At our last patient, the fear was in the evening and at night on the largest. Their happiness was, that dealt with the time a Patient has, the language in addition to German, your language. He has a lot of translated. But I had always an uneasy feeling, because he had actually its own problems.

My wish: A night emergency telephone

The current Situation could worsen, because many people get help until they come to rest. Then, the internal loading is high. I hope that the responsible Bodies of the possible solutions will be considered. How about a 24-hour Hotline that I can call at night to get to for conversations with my patients an interpreter? The could be turned on using the speaker function of the phone, and I could help my patients in night-time crises.

Photo: Katharina Voss