專八真題:2008年news broadcast(3/3)

More than 22 million people who live in the United States don’t speak or understand English very well and that can be deadly.In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine,Dr. Glenn Flores highlights some cases where language barriers prevented patients from communicating with health care providers — with serious consequences. Dr. Flores recalls one incident in which English-speaking doctors thought a Spanish-speaking man was suffering from a drug overdose.“He was in the hospital basically for two days being worked up for drug abuse,” Flores says.“They finally did a head CT scan and realized he had had a major bleed into his brain. He ended up being paralyzed and he got a $71 million settlement award from the hospital.” Dr. Flores, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin says that despite examples like that, the majority of U.S. health care facilities still do not have trained interpreters on site. But he acknowledges that increasing numbers of health care workers are bilingual,and that more clinics and hospitals do make sure their staff and patients understand each other.