No Habla Espanol

Today was the day- I saw my first Spanish only speaking patient. I guess it's about time but it made me a little frazzled. I felt bad because I wasn't able to communicate with her to tell her what I was doing and why I was doing it. I know a LITTLE Spanish but when it comes time to use it I have no idea where it goes. Luckily I married a Spanish speaker who doesn't work on Tuesdays so he came in and saved the day. He translated for me and was able to communicate to my patient that what and why of what I was doing. He even gave her some OHI using his knowledge with some of mine. This patient is my mockboard patient so I needed her to fill out the specific HHX for that and my husband helped with that too. He seriously saved the day and I fell in love with him even more! This patient is a Class III with very tenacious calculus. I felt a little discouraged when I was done with her because not only did I miss spots that were obvious but I had to retake two of my three xrays. Looking back on it I can come up with a few excuses for my poor performance-- I was out of my comfort zone because she only spoke Spanish, I was really focused on getting her xrays for mockboards, and I don't have a ton of experience with tenacious calculus. So there you go- they say excuses are like armpits because everyone has them and they all stink and I have three of them! Well I am going to call it a day and keep my fingers crossed that next week goes a little better than this one.