3 Reasons Health Care Assistants Can Benefit From English Language Skills

No matter where you are in the world, the healthcare industry strives to provide quality care to patients regardless of their ethnicity, gender, age, and native language. Doctors, physicians, nurses, and healthcare assistants can only do their job correctly if they can extract accurate information from patients. Any miscommunication can affect the result for both parties.

It’s a particularly critical asset for caregivers since it’s a job that entails keeping up-to-date with the elderly patient’s needs. Beyond ironing out the risk of misdiagnoses, this field of healthcare requires nurses to build a stable relationship with your seniors, one that can make a world of difference in your experience as a healthcare provider.

Benefit #1: Being Bilingual Allows You to Establish Quality Companionship

When caring for elderly patients regularly, nothing beats understanding them beyond their medication needs. Knowing a second language creates opportunities to establish meaningful experiences between you and the patient, allowing you to exchange stories, understand their interests, and make them feel understood.

It can help boost their self-esteem and overall well-being, especially in easing your patient’s worries regarding their illness. It will add a unique human touch to your caregiving, one that can heal wounds that no medicine can offer.

Benefit #2: Speaking their Language Expands the Patient’s Patience

Some senior patients can be challenging to deal with, but various factors contribute to this behaviour. Understanding what makes them act the way they do can help you adjust your workflow, allowing you to respect reasonable requests and give them the space they need.

It would be best if you also were patient on your part, whether it’s to repeat a sentence until they understand or help them maintain their sense of independence in specific situations to make them feel dignified.

Benefit #3: Minimize Communication Gaps and Ensure Patients Can Understand You

Language barriers can be frustrating for anyone, but it’s incredibly difficult for the elderly who no longer have the right mindset, patience, or hearing to understand your instructions. Communicating is crucial, so honing your language skills can help you determine the right volume, intonation, and speech rate to make it easier for the elderly to understand you.

The Bottom Line: The Positive Effects of Being Bilingual in Healthcare

Speaking two languages can give you a competitive advantage in any business field, but it’s particularly beneficial in the healthcare industry. It can differentiate between quality and standard care given to diverse patients, especially in multicultural regions.

Healthcare goes beyond diagnoses and procedures, so if you want to understand what your patients need, being bilingual leaves more room to expand your practice and deliver effective communication.

How Can We Help?

Quality communication plays a pivotal role in the healthcare industry, especially for medical assistants who handle diverse patients daily. If you don’t want language barriers to strain your relationship with your patients, we offer multiple English language learning programs that can hone your skills and bolster your career growth in more ways than one.

Get in touch with us today!