New worker, new job, no English? Occupational language bridges gap
Survival Spanish helpful for non-Hispanic OHNs
Every year, thousands of new immigrants to the United States start jobs that promise hope for a new life but may bear safety and health risks if no one at their new jobs can communicate in their native language. It's not difficult to imagine the problems that can arise if an employee who speaks only Spanish is injured or sustains an exposure at work because he has not received safety instructions in his native language, or is unable to tell anyone where he is hurt.
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, 49% of the foreign-born labor force in the United States in 2005 was Hispanic. Increases in the number of non-English-speaking Hispanic people working in the United States has created a demand for language instruction that bridges the gap between not knowing a language at all and being fully fluent.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 7 million Spanish-speaking adults in the United States have little or no command of English. The idea behind "survival Spanish" or "occupational Spanish" is to teach supervisors, coworkers, and any other personnel who interact with the workers enough Spanish that they can communicate and understand just enough to make routine tasks and communication easier.
Another benefit, says Cheryl Little, RN, BSN, director of health education for Iowa Valley Community College District, is that if the worker is injured or sick, he or she and the company's nurse can communicate well enough that the nurse can determine what the problem is, what he or she can do at that moment, and what to relate to emergency medical personnel, the employee's physician, or worker's comp examiners, if necessary.
Little's department offers a Spanish-for-Nursing course that teaches non-Spanish-speaking nurses who work in a variety of settings how to provide medical care and attention to Spanish-speaking patients. The idea is not to make a non-Spanish-speaking nurse fluent in Spanish, but to give the nurse rudimentary, job- and setting-specific language skills that allow him or her to have immediate, very narrowly focused communication with the patients or workers in their care.
"The course also provides some cultural training for our students, with the emphasis on enhancing the quality of care," Little says.
The course at Iowa Valley, and ones like it taught at more and more schools throughout the country, is to teach non-Spanish-speaking supervisors, coworkers, and key contacts like health care providers to use and understand enough crucial Spanish phrases and idioms to obtain and convey basic information. For a nurse or other health care provider, this would include taking a patient history, obtaining vital signs, performing a physical assessment and routine procedures, preparing patients for surgery, administering medications or injections, feeding and bathing, interacting with family, and honoring patient request.
"This is very much a growing area," says Little, who introduced the program at Iowa Valley in 2001 to meet the needs of a growing Hispanic population in her region. In addition to providing occupational Spanish for nurses, the program has offered instruction geared toward banking, correctional facilities, sales, law enforcement, and dental workers.
"The beauty of it is that it is specific to your occupation, and you learn phrases at a basic level. You are not fluent by any means," she stresses. "You can do the very basic things to establish the patient's condition, make him or her comfortable, calm him and explain what is happening, and establish who his or her family members are, get their history, and those kinds of things."
Translators not always an option
While having a translator at the ready would be ideal, not many employers can afford to have certified translators on hand. Using bilingual employees to translate is one option, but can lead to liability problems if the volunteer translation doesn't get the information across accurately.
Central Iowa, like other parts of the country, has seen a growing influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants over the last 10 years. The new residents are not only going to work in English-speaking worksites, but are accessing health care in greater numbers, creating a need in the health care community for more fluency in Spanish.
"You can't always have an interpreter, but with the basic phrases we use, no matter what dialect of Spanish the employee speaks — whether they're from Spain or Central America or Mexico, or use the various dialects in each of those countries — they will understand," explains Little. "For example, the word 'car' is different in Mexico and Spain, so we use the word 'automobile,' which is the same in both places."
Occupational Spanish, according to Sam Slick, PhD, president of Command Spanish, an instruction program that teaches work-specific Spanish, doesn't try to take the place of a fluent translator; it merely serves as a bridge between no communication and full communication between people of different languages.
"Any Spanish is better than none if you have no resources for languages," says Slick, former chairman of the department of foreign languages at the University of Southern Mississippi, who adds that programs like Command Spanish safeguard against getting into problems with miscommunication by keeping interactions in Spanish short, to the point, and limited to "yes" and "no" questions and answers whenever possible.
Typically, a nurse in a Command Spanish class would learn about 50 statements, commands, and yes/no questions, Slick says. "We don't train people to function as interpreters," he says. "This simply allows a nurse to establish a closer connection with a patient using those language protocols needed to do a certain job. It's based on a momentary interface between a Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking person."
Judy Vessey, RN, human resources and safety manager for Burgess-Norton Manufacturing in Geneva, IL, began taking steps to make her worksite Spanish-friendly 10 years ago, when a growing Hispanic population brought the first Spanish-speaking workers to Burgess Norton.
Vessey urges any occupational health or human resources manager considering a workplace survival Spanish program to incorporate cultural training. "The understanding of the cultural differences, I think, was extremely important and has helped in areas that I hadn't even counted on. It was probably the most important thing I have done, because it set the stage, before any Spanish-speaking employees came in, for us to look at and address any challenges we might see coming."
Slick says cross-cultural training offers non-Hispanic nurses a means to understand sometimes-misunderstood principles of Hispanic culture, particularly as they apply to attitudes toward health care or the work setting.
Reducing the language gap
"When [Hispanic workers] began working for us, the language gap created problems, especially if there was an emergency," Vessey says. "Being the safety manager, of course, this was a concern for me. When [a Spanish-speaking employee] gets ill or injured, we could have a real problem until an interpreter could get there."
Vessey says there was also the matter of diplomacy, as well. "With our supervisors, I didn't want to upset their apple cart by telling them they had to learn to speak Spanish," she explains. "The integration of the new employees had gone really well, and I didn't want to send the supervisors the message that they were going to have to learn an entire language to accommodate new workers."
She began looking around for a less drastic step and came across the Command Spanish program being taught through the state of Iowa. Any reservations she had about supervisors' reaction to the program evaporated with the first session, she says.
"It was fantastic. I got not one negative comment from the supervisors, and they say they think it was very helpful just to bridge that language gap with their employees," she says. "They were skeptical at first, but after the first session, they were very enthusiastic."
Little says one aspect of occupational Spanish that helps English speakers ease into it is that it is very short — 15 to 20 hours of class time, as opposed to the years it takes to become truly fluent.
Seek out state resources
In addition to private or college-based language courses, workplace safety and human resource managers should contact their state departments of labor and industry to find out what resources might be available to assist in bridging language gaps at work.
States bordering Mexico, and states like Florida with a large Hispanic population, maintain an array of resources for workers and employers. Others are following suit; for example, Washington State's Department of Labor and Industries maintains an active outreach program to ensure Spanish-speaking employees and business owners have equal access to information about their rights, benefits, and legal obligations.
The state has 60 employees who are certified to interpret for Hispanic and non-Hispanic speakers, and the department's editorial group has translated more than 120 letters, forms, legal documents, and informational publications into Spanish.
"It's important to be able to interact with a patient or an injured worker [who doesn't speak English], because being hurt or being in a hospital can be a frightening experience anyway, and even more frightening if nobody can speak your language at all," Slick says.
[For more information, contact:
Cheryl Little, RN, BSN, director of health education, Iowa Valley Community College District. Room 601, 3702 S. Center St., Marshalltown, IA 50158. E-mail: [email protected].
Judy M. Vessey, RN, human resources and safety manager, Burgess-Norton Manufacturing Inc., 500 Western Ave., Geneva, IL 60134. Phone: (630) 232-4100. E-mail: [email protected].
Sam L. Slick, PhD, president and CEO, Command Spanish, Inc. P.O. Box 1091, Petal, MS 39465. Phone (601) 270-4871. E-mail: [email protected].
Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, PO Box 44000, Olympia, WA 98504. Phone: (360) 902-5800. Resources in Spanish available online at: www.lni.wa.gov/Spanish.
Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Force Characteristics, April 2006. Online at www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.toc.htm.
Every year, thousands of new immigrants to the United States start jobs that promise hope for a new life but may bear safety and health risks if no one at their new jobs can communicate in their native language.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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