Emergency medicine FAQ in multiple languages.

April 14, 2009 5:47 PM

Does anyone know of a handy reference of emergency medicine questions and statements in different languages?

I'm thinking along the lines of cue cards or the like that would have a list of commonly-used questions and other items that might need to be said (e.g. "Point to where it hurts, are you taking any medication? Please give us your health card," etc.) translated and transliterated into a bunch of other languages. Software for a Palm or iPhone would be just as good!

posted by greatgefilte to health & fitness (4 comments total)

Yes! I have been looking for an opportunity to pimp out my Rapid Rescue Spanish for, like, two years! I don't know if they have any other languages available, but here's Mosby Elsevier's website mainpage, and a CD ROM version.

It has tons of commonly used phrases, tabbed sections for easy browsing, lists of time, numbers, anatomy, diseases, conditions, and has all questions written in English, Spanish, and phonetically. It was the best purchase (of a book that I realistically have no use for) that I have ever made.
posted by esmerelda_jenkins at 6:17 PM on April 14

Most of the quick-reference EMS books have some Spanish phrases. I use the Borm Bruckmeier EMS Pocket , which is great for everything else, too. It has 32 pages of Spanish phrases, from "hola" to "ha recibido un golpe en el abdomen recientemente?" to "vamos a hospital por helicoptero!"

I don't own it, but there's an app called "Medical Spanish EMS [Emergency Medical Spanish Guide]" which looks pretty sweet.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there are many non-Spanish EMS resources out there. In my EMT class, we learned basic sign language because we had a pretty large community that used it. Might help to know what other languages you're after! For example, I could probably point you to some web-based Hmong resources.
posted by charmcityblues at 6:43 PM on April 14

Ah, I've answered my own question -- a multilingual phrasebook from the British Red Cross.
posted by greatgefilte at 7:03 PM on April 14 [1 favorite has favorites]

Also: Tarascon Medical Translation Pocketbook.
posted by gramcracker at 4:44 AM on April 15