Speak English or Die

[Mistress Klaus]

Doctors in Australia who fail a basic English test. .
Overseas-trained (?) doctors are causing potential harm to patients with their terrible English skills (which is little more than 'broken English').
Some examples of this incompetence is:....

!!Have you had any killers in your back.
!!How long have you been a pain in the neck?
!!You have big migrant head (ache)
!!I am oversea trimmed doctor
!!Put you child in the toilet (tip for toilet training)
!!This patient is delusional. Crazy. Crazy pain in the head. He kept saying that he was kangaroo. (The patient was a Jackaroo)
!!I've just examined that lump in your upper quadrant and you've got cancer. Are you happy about that?
!!You will need to iron your cervix (to a woman with an STD)
!!When you reach organism maybe you are not exciting.

etc etc

Not only is this an insult to our intelligence but more than 1600 of doctors from Third World countries are coming to QLd (Australia) each year!!!
I don't visit doctors myself, but this is an outrage. Shit like this is coming to our country through some loophole that enables them to escape screening of qualifications & basic English skills.

[AngryPotato]

I read a source that stated 38% of US doctors were Indian. I've seen tons of them and I wonder where they've been trained. I had an Indian doctor in my late teens and had no problems like this, but he was very Americanized. One of the healthcare issues that I've seen first hand are the West Indies islanders that come to the US and take up jobs as nurses. Their english is OK, but I fear that one of these undertrain/underskilled people will be the eyes & ears for the doctor of someone of my family. In the US you can go to the emergency room for a wide variety of reasons and be treated by a doctor without ever meeting the doctor. The nurses have become the point people in healthcare. Very sad.

[Disease]

Hahaha, those quotes are funny Skadi.

I do not have such a fear of immigration as you do, but I do think anyone who comes to Australia be required to learn English if they are here for a certain time, and especially if they are to have such an important occupation.

[Mistress Klaus]

Hahaha, those quotes are funny Skadi.

I do not have such a fear of immigration as you do, but I do think anyone who comes to Australia be required to learn English if they are here for a certain time, and especially if they are to have such an important occupation.

I just find it immensely insulting to Australian society & culture. Actually it is not these immigrants fault really (of course people are opportunists)..it is the governments laid back attitude of opening the flood gates up...

[Arundel]

I'm glad you brought this subject up. It is one that disturbs me greatly. It seems as though, here in America, that a good share of our doctors are foreigners, and hard to understand. I remember I had one from India one time and he kept telling me my son has a wirus. I didn't know what he was talking about. I finally figured out he meant virus. They should have to study their English a little more before trying to deal with English speaking people. It could be a very serious matter, if a patient misinterpreted something important. But on the other hand, I had been dealing with a 'funny' speaking doctor, not understanding a good share of what he was saying, so I called in for an appointment with an American speaking doctor. I asked specifically if the new one was an American, she hesitated a little, and then assured me he was. Much to my surprise he was an african american, but he spoke good english. I had never had an african american doctor before, so it came as a surprise.
We also have foreign speaking telephone people. Many times I have called in for instructions to correct a problem with my computer. Guess what, I get some sweet little thing that is some breed of hispanic, and because I can barely understand her, she gets irritated with me as though it is my fault. I think many hispanics are manning the phones in America, even my husband has trouble understanding them.
Why on earth don't the companies put someone on the phone that we Americans understand, and put the others back on a desk somewhere.

[flemish]

Sounds like you guys would hate New York, and New Jersey. When I lived in that area, I felt like I was living in another country; some place in the Third World.

[Zauberspruch]

Native born guys and gals in New York and New Jersey speak a form of English that I find as hard to understand as they who struggle with my Southern twang.

Every immigrant generation has been confounded with language, only now there seems to be no urgency to learn English. The plant where I am working today is 97% Hispanic - largely Mexican and when we offered English classes after work no one showed up.

Oddly enough, the first generation American-born kids seem to lose their "mother tongue." For example, while Corpus Christi Texas has a large Hispanic population, most are born here and few speak Spanish.

My father was born in the Rheinland, but I learned most of my German in a university in Texas.

Ein Mensh ist ein Mensch.
Ein Kuh ist ein Kuh.
So geht das Leben,
ab und zu.


=================================

Zauberspruch

.

[Gorm the Old]

@ Arundel -- This may come as a shock to you, but Indians ARE English-speaking people. English is one of the two official languages of India. The other is Hindi. Your doctor probably studied English for as many years as you did. However, what he speaks is INDIAN English, a distinct dialect as distinct as the Australian dialect which can be just as hard for Americans to understand.

Of course, his birth language is NOT English. If it were Hindi, or another of the Sanskrit-derived languages, his English would be influenced by them. In the Devanagari syllabary, used in Sanskrit, Hindi, and other Indian languages, there is one character, called "va" which is used for both the "v" and "w" sounds. Va is pronounced like a combination of the two. Thus, in learning English, the Indian never really masters the distinction between v and w.

Indian English has other peculiarities. My Indian friends insist that it isn't so, but I hear a faint "r" after every "o". Or yes I do. In Sanskrit and Hindi, all syllables are stressed equally. When an Indian learns English, which is strongly accented, he is at a loss as to where to place the stress. Often, it ends up on the wrong sylLABle. This is the way English is spoken in his homeland. American English is as much of a shock to him as Indian English is to you.

To ask him to study English would be as offensive to him as it would be to an Australian who pronounces "basin" as "bison". 'E speaks English, myte, wot's wrong wiv you ? Alas, we are kindred peoples separated by the same language.

[theTasmanian]

Yes it is a problem.......even if they do speak English try listening to a fast talking Indian or paky then some of the Asian doctors are really something

I am trying to get my kids to look ahead in life so they can maybe become a Doctor or Dentist etc

[Hulda.Kin]

I live in a country town and we get a lot of 3rd world Dr's here... they usually stay for 1-2 years depending on their contract... there have only been 2 that I have found to be any good... the others, well, a person really needs to be able to make their own diagnosis and prescribe the correct medications for themselves and get the Dr's to sign the forms otherwise there would be some fatalities up here.

We were recently referred to a pediatric nephrologist by one of the local 'Doctors' and it's a specialist that operated on a child recently and damaged his good kidney so badly that the child is now on dialysis for life... subsequently we refused to take our child there as his problem is actually inoperable but still the Dr's will try and drum up business for each other.

When it comes to accents, there was one Chinese Dr who although a lovely chap, had the thickest accent I've ever heard, I had to tell my daughter what he was saying to her as she couldn't understand him and yet he was stationed at the local hospital in the emergency department on a regular basis, and other patients had much difficulty understanding him as well.

The problem with thick accents and broken English is a dangerous combination.