A human network to not leave foreign hospitalized patients who have difficulty communicating alone. It is the ‘Ohana’ project, a Hawaiian term meaning ‘family’, promoted by the Gemelli Irccs University Hospital Foundation in Rome. “They are people of flesh and blood, first generation foreigners, who can really make a difference in supporting the patients who are taken care of beyond culture and language. The message to colleagues is that ‘I work for you because we are part of the same working family”. Today we have 120 nurses in our “network” belonging to Sitra (Corporate Rehabilitation Technical Nursing Service) and coming from Poland, Romania, India, Congo, the Philippines, Germany, France “. This was explained to Adnkronos Salute by Cristina Pistacchio, professor of cultural anthropology at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Catholic University of Rome and coordinator of the ‘Ohana’ project.
A guide to help foreign doctors understand dialects, slang phrases and slang of hospitalized patients. It is the small encyclopedia that the nurses of the NHS, the National Health Service, the counterpart of our National Health Service, have created with a list of 50 sentences translated and often explained in a more accessible English. Between 2019 and 2022, nurses from India, the Philippines and Nigeria accounted for two-thirds of all new hires in the UK. According to Royal College of Nursing (Rcn), “all over the world figurative expressions are used to describe emotions and moods, so do those who are hospitalized but those who are not English may have some problems”. Here the nurses have decided to translate some of these expressions that could be difficult for those who, despite knowing the language, were not yet trained in certain slang.
How was ‘Ohana’ born? “From an intuition, from participation in the field and from a consideration – replies Pistacchio – that we within our company have established that each nurse takes charge of a patient of which he is the referent until discharge. Each patient has a plan personalized assistance based on the humanization of care and the person at the centre. But if this process is very demanding for a native patient, let alone for a foreigner who does not speak Italian or English or both. Or, has had experience with traditional medicine of their country and is lost in a Western hospital. Here are our nurses who have agreed to help us in the ‘Ohana’ project, are distributed in all hospital settings from operating rooms, to Oncology, Medicine, Surgery”.
“What we do, I believe is the only reality in Italy – he continues – is to create a ‘bridge’ that joins doctors, nurses and other professionals and helps them to understand non-native cultures. In this way the foreign patient feels he has next to a person who knows his culture and his language, is able to explain and communicate even delicate issues such as the discovery of a tumor.The right words are necessary for understanding, in addition to the disease I can explain the path you will take and who you will interface with “.
“When a nurse manages to help a fellow countryman who is hospitalized at that moment, it is as if their roots reunited – observes Pistacchio – there is great satisfaction, it is recognized that the person who is close to you has also lived in front of”. One example, among many, of how the ‘Ohana’ project managed to improve assistance “happened in the operating room for a delivery – says the teacher – the patient spoke only Arabic and there was communication difficulty in a delicate phase , here we sent one of our nurses and the patient was able to complete the birth in the best possible way. But this type of help also happens a lot in pediatric oncology and in the emergency room”.
Does the ‘Ohana’ project have room for improvement? “At the moment we do not have, for example, Chinese or Japanese nurses. But if I had to highlight one front on which to work, I could indicate that of extending this network to other professionals and skills, I am thinking of doctors”, concludes Pistacchio.
#Helping #foreign #patients #hospital #Ohana #project #Gemelli #mother #tongue #nurses