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Medical Interpretation – Role play 12

Length: 03:03

Quality: high

Difficulty: medium

Actors

A doctor, a patient and her mother.

Context

A woman of Brazilian nationality goes to the emergency room with a Brazilian girl who
has been suffering from unbearable pain for days. They are shown into the doctor's
office. At first the woman, whose English is not perfect, does not admit she is the girl's
mother out of fear. She ends up admitting it when the doctor mentions Social Services.
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Mother: Hello, I’m taking care of this girl, and she’s in so much pain... Can you help,

please? (the doctor feels confused).

Doctor: What happened?

Mother: This girl is suffering a lot. I don’t know what is happening to her. Look, look.

Doctor: Help me lay her down on the stretcher. Let's see, let's examine you. What's your

name?

Patient: Poliana.

Doctor: Poliana, tell me where it hurts.

Patient: Everywhere. Please, help me, my stomach is hurting a lot.

Doctor: Calm down, let me examine you. You have a very swollen belly… This is very rare.
Blood pressure is very low, 78 over 45. We're going to give you an injection to ease the pain.
Poliana, are you pregnant? How old are you?
Patient: Fourteen.

Doctor: Fourteen months?

Patient: No, I’m fourteen years old, I wasn’t sure about the question.

Doctor: It's okay. Poliana, now I need you to be still. I just want to see one thing… Okay.
You are not pregnant. It's not a baby. It looks like a mass and there is loose fluid. Well,
we're not going to do a CAT scan. You have hypotension and peritonitis. We are going to
take you to the operating room because you have to be operated on.

Patient: Oh, I’m so afraid! And what will happen to me after that?

Mother: We will take care of you. But don't worry, everything will be fine. (To mother):
Are you her mother? If she's not, we'll have to call Social Services.
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Mother: No, don’t call them… I’m her mother, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to lie… Is she
going to be okay?

Doctor: Yeah, she's going to be fine, but I should have brought her earlier. When did she
get sick? When did she start her?

Mother: She started to say that she wasn’t feeling well one or two weeks ago, but I
couldn’t bring her here. You don’t understand. We have no papers – undocumented.

Doctor: That's no excuse to abandon your daughter. I'm sorry, but in this case I'm afraid
we'll be forced to call Social Services or the police.

Mother: No! Please! They will take her from me. It’s always the same. I’ve known other
immigrants that came to the hospital, you the doctors treated them perfectly, and then they
were forced to go back to their country.

Doctor: Look, that's not so. You are talking about medical repatriation and it is not
something that we are going to do here.

Mother: I was afraid to even bring her here. You think I didn't want to help her? What are
my choices? If you send us back to our country, we’ll starve or I’ll work as a prostitute, or
even worse. The only choice I had was to ignore it and pray for her.

Doctor: I understand what you are telling me, believe me yes, but well… The most
important thing is your daughter's health, and Social Services will also be able to help her:
you should not be afraid.

Mother: Ok, I’ll do anything you tell me to help my daughter. Thank you.