  <div id="pagebody_outline">    <div id="left_box">      <div class="life_title_box">        <div class="life_titie_box_top">        <!-- Image -->        </div>        <div class="midashi">Ignorance?  Poor at communicating?<br/><br />Misunderstanding acquired without realizing may put someone at risk. </div>        <div class="life_titie_box_bottom">        <!-- Image -->        </div>      </div>      <div id="article">                  <div id="article_left">                        <img src="/english/images/life/554_life_03.jpg" width="140" />              <div>MS fujiwara<br />RASC<br /><a href="http://www.rasc.jp">Researching and Supporting Multi-Cultural healthcare Services</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.yokosojapan.net/english/archive/000360.html">MS fujiwara　Profile</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.rasc.jp/pamphlets/english/english_all.pdf">Guide　for　new　mother　and newborn baby</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.yokosojapan.net/english/archive/000493.html">From U.K<br />~Recognition born in daily life~　</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.yokosojapan.net/english/archive/000513.html">In case　of　Chinese　woman</a> </div>                                                                      </div>                <div id="article_right">What embarrasses me most when I see foreign patients is communication.  Language difference is likely to cause language communication problems and difficulties.  Can you identify that the patient is poor at Japanese, not having knowledge about that?<br />There may be many cases where we attend foreign patients without a single thought about it.  When they don't understand what we are saying, we usually try to make us understood by making various explanations or using various words.  However, if we can't still make us understood, we might decide unconsciously that the patient doesn't know about the disease and the treatment or the patient doesn't understand about medical care.<br /><br /><br />The following story is real one.  A pregnant Korean woman realized something wrong in her physical condition in mid pregnancy (in around the seventh month of pregnancy), so contacted the hospital.  Though she communicates in Japanese in her daily life without any problem, she couldn't explain her pregnant condition well in Japanese.  Her poor Japanese might make a medical expert think her childish.  The medical expert paid no attention to her explanation.  It happened to be at night, this was starting to worry her.  So, though she got an answer, "It's OK." on the phone, she judged for herself, visited the hospital to consult the medical expert.  Then she was diagnosed as being in a very critical condition, and hospitalized immediately.  Consequently she had been in the hospital for one month. <br /><br /><br />Not communicating well in nonnative language is one thing, not understanding about something because of little knowledge is another.  It is true that it's hard to tell how a person we are talking to understands us, with language barrier.  However, we should not assume automatically that perhaps he or she doesn't understand at all.  We should think that though he or she knows about it, language barrier prevents him or her from understanding.  Then there may make big differences in the behavior and the judgment.<br /><br /><br />We have two reasons why we have clumsy expressions.  One is because we don't know about it.  The other is because we are poor at communicating in the language.  The latter is not same as the case where we don't understand because we don't know.  We should have it in the back of our head that we sometimes have clumsy expressions because we are poor at communicating in the language, not because we have little knowledge.  Then we might understand feelings each other and make us understood more.<br /> </div>        <div class="both10"></div>      </div>    </div>  <!-- end of left_box -->  </div><!-- end of pagebody_outline -->