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Reflection Run the List: A Story of Language, Culture and Love
Run the List: A Story of Language, Culture, and Love
By Alina Mitina, DO
It was the end of my intern year and I was carrying the most active patient roster I'd ever had — just another day in emergency medicine. “Run the list,” I said in my head repeatedly. As I determined the best next steps for each patient and carefully mapped out the most efficient pathway through the department to see all of them, I saw ambulances start to line up in the ambulance bay. They were all waiting on one patient: an elderly woman.
I walked over to the charge nurse and the emergency medical technicians, who were looking wearily at the patient. As the charge nurse spotted me, she perked up, hope shining from her eyes, and asked: "You speak Russian, right?"
Of course, I do. I’d immigrated to America from Ukraine at the age of seven, and I still remember my mother tongue. I walked over to the patient and introduced myself. Her whole face lit up as I began speaking her language. She spelled her name for me in Russian and told me she had come to America with her husband from Ukraine 30 years ago. The patient told me her story, about falling on the street and being unable to stand up. I helped triage and comfort her until she was placed in a room. The next morning, I followed up on her and found out that she had been admitted.
Two days later, the charge nurse told me they needed my Russian interpreter skills once again. “How odd,” I thought,
as it was very rare to have Russianspeaking patients in the area where I was working.
I went to the patient, an elderly man, who was standing in the ambulance bay with a middle-aged man. The middleaged man introduced himself as the man’s caretaker and told me the elderly man was there for depression and weakness.
I learned that the elderly man had become weakened over the previous two days after he had “lost his wife.” The Russian home health agency had called four of the local hospitals looking for her, but had been unsuccessful. “Interesting,” I thought, and I asked the patient to describe what his wife looked like. Suddenly it all clicked. I told the elderly man "I know exactly where your wife is!” His face lit up in the most delightful way.
The next morning, I again encountered the Russian caretaker walking into the emergency department through the ambulance bay. He was holding two large bags of groceries — Passover food for the elderly Ukrainian couple. The caretaker had forgotten his vaccination card so wasn’t allowed into the hospital.
“Would you take the food to them?” he asked. “Of course!” I agreed.
The couple was sharing the same room and when I entered, I found them sleeping soundly. I gently awakened them and when they saw me, their faces lit up with joy that we were able to connect again.
By taking the time to engage with my patients on such a personal level and using my native language to communicate with them, I helped reunite this lovely couple and brought a little happiness to their time in the hospital. I think that is a list well-run.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Mitina is a PGY-1 emergency medicine resident physician at St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Yonkers, New York.
