Comments from patients

[Elsiebear90]

Not really looking for advice, but just wanting to vent a bit I suppose. I work in a patient facing role in a wealthy area of the midlands (started in Feb this year), I’m originally from the Black Country, but haven’t lived there for about 8 years now, so my accent is a bit softer, but definitely still there.

I’ve worked across the country from as far north as Barnsley down to London, presented at conferences, travelled all around the world from US to Japan, ex partners have been non native speakers of English (Brazilian and Dutch) and no one has ever commented that they have difficulty understanding me. I have friends from all across the country and world and they understand me.

Since I started working at this trust I’ve had regular comments from a minority of patients (usually older) such as “I can’t understand a word you’re saying” then a relative “translates”, patients asking where I’m from then telling me they thought I was “foreign” because of my accent, a patient telling me he could tell I have hearing problems because of the way I speak (I don’t), patients correcting my pronunciation of words, laughing and mimicking the way I pronounce words etc

Yesterday I had a patient ask me what my husband does for a living, when I told him I have a wife he replied “I find that really sad” when asked why he said “because it’s unnatural”. I’ve had patients be openly racist and racist to my non-white colleagues. Patients asking where I live as they “can tell I’m not from here” then running it down etc.

I’ve worked in the NHS for many years all around the country and while you do get a minority of rude/racist/homophobic patients I’ve never encountered so many as when working here. It’s actually starting to get me down now as it’s happening so often and although I love this job and it’s starting to put me off.

Is this just what is to be expecting when working in an area like this? I have usually worked in quite deprived areas and/or ones with more diverse populations, like Birmingham, Leicester, High Wycombe etc.

Are you in the east midlands? I have a London accent and been here 15 years. I still find I get asked where am I from. Am I from the south. I sound Cockney etc. I don't sound remotely Cockney but London.

Some people are still a bit behind lol. It is because it is quite mono cultural I think.

I do get annoyed if I go to shops and get assumed I am up on a visit!

Scottish and got this when worked down south in England, 'ooo I'm just not understanding you. Your accents so strong'
Only the odd arsehole though, DH is ex forces so have attended functions with royal family and spoken with them who had no trouble. I (childishly) eventually played them at their own game and wrote down the questions, including 'I'm so so sorry I can't understand your accent, huge apologies'

No, I don’t want to say exactly where as it’s a small area with only one trust and I’ve shared a lot of personal details on other posts, but it’s south of Birmingham, worked in Leicester for years and never had any problems!

I wouldn't have had a discussion about your wife, tbh - nothing to do with your sexuality, I just wouldn't talk about my personal life with my patients.

I couldn't understand and a word most people said when we moved from the SW to the NW years ago, tbh. Took a good 6 months. Would never have been so bloody rude as to say so, though.

As a previous poster said, it’s not appropriate to discuss your personal life with patients, so that’s easily solved. As for the rest, some people are unfortunately just thick. If you work in a public facing role, you need to develop a very thick skin.

I don’t usually discuss my personal life with patients, this patient was talking about his wife and how they have been married for 63 years and asked if I was married, I said yes then he asked what my husband did for a living, so I said I have a wife not a husband. I don’t think that’s inappropriate.

Maybe @Elsiebear90 it would be better to not answer personal questions, but I am sorry that you are having such a hard time.

As for different accents, as I've got older, my once excellent hearing has got quite a lot worse. I keep on having to ask people - including close family members - to speak more loudly. I also used to be very good at understanding accents - unless they were very broad.

Unfortunately, these days with my added hearing loss, I am often not able to understand many accents at all. I find it very awkward and embarrassing to have to keep on asking people to repeat themselves, as I know that it must be very annoying for them. Nowadays I will only very rarely answer a telephone call as I can't even understand people who have the same accent as mine - I find that I need to be able to lip read at the same time as I am listening to someone, if I am to have any chance of making out what they are saying.

So please try to not take offence, or take things personally when people are struggling to understand you, I think that the reason why they can't understand you OP is hardly ever going to be because they are lying to you, and are just being snobs. 💐

Sorry @Elsiebear90 crossed posts - it takes me quite a while to type!

Is it the older generation. I certainly find the older generation are more racist and homophobic esp where dementia eg is present.
You certainly need a thick skin in the job.
As for mentioning your wife. I never tell patients about my private life, it's none of their business. I just let them assume I have a husband or male partner, I don't correct them. They are strangers, they don't need to know.

No it's not - don't be so fucking ageist. It's a number of rude individuals who haven't learned manners.

For some people, myself included, the older you get the harder some accents are to understand.

I struggle with some Scottish accents, northern accents, Irish accents some parts of wales such as Cardiff where they can be very high pitched and speak quickly.

I live in a fairly middle class area but in a city and I think people here are generally tolerant and not racist. I can't imagine anyone behaving like that in my doctor's surgery.
Do you live in a small town or village? Sometimes they can be very insular and small minded.
I'm sorry this is happening.

Obviously the racist and homophobic stuff is unacceptable - I’m sure people will have some good but still work appropriate responses.

The accent - well the thing is a Black Country accent IS hard to understand.

I grew up there until I was a teenager at which point we moved further south. This and the subsequent moving again when I was a little older has meant that near enough my accent has gone now.

But it is really quite strong and I’ve had to almost translate on a couple of occasions when working with a team of people with a couple of members from the black country.

It is very rude to take the piss out of it though. I would be asking people not to be rude about your accent/speech if they did that.

Well I think there is a group of people that think they can just mock your accent, correct you etc etc…
ds1 is at Uni and have come across a group of them who do exactly that. They’re all from ‘down South’. Has annoyed ds1 from day 1 when they started to tell him how to pronounce the name of areas that HE is from….

So it’s not just ‘older people’ that behave like that…..

Fwiw Theyre also the ‘woke’ people extremely careful about racism, correcting people if they think they’ve gone iver the line. All the whilst totally missing the fact theyre othering people by commenting on accent, assuming ‘they’re foreign’ etc….

Im sorry @Elsiebear90 I don’t have an answer to that. Just know it’s annoying and very hard to live with. And that’s it’s making it much harder to treat those patients with empathy when they display behaviours like this.

I lived in east Leicestershire for years and found a more numerically significant minority where I lived to be both racist and xenophobic (I'm white, but not from the UK).

This blew my mind slightly, as where I lived was very close to extremely diverse (in fact, it turned majority non-white while I lived in the region) Leicester. I worked out after a while that I'd inadvertently moved to a 'white flight' village. People 'fleeing' an ethnically diverse city were always going to manifest a higher level of general racial intolerance. And to lump Irish people in with the 'dirty Asians' as 'not quite as white as the rest of us'. It was an instructive but miserable few years. I moved on.