Language is the Heart of Patient Safety

Moe Rustom of Detroit has been a nurse for more than 23 years and understands the challenges of limited English proficiency in patients as a provider. He believes that using interpreters takes a clever health care provider. The opportunity may not always be apparent, but using interpreters can have a big payoff in terms of patient safety and experience. He describes one case in which a patient nodded his head when a nurse asked if he understood the directions for taking one pill a day for the next seven days—and that he patient went home, took all seven pills at once, and came back with a brain bleed. Rustom quoted Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, it goes to his head. If you talk him in his own language, it goes to his heart.””