Table 3 Indicative quotations: Communication, culture and pain management
Participant | Indicative quotation |
|---|---|
Caregiver #1 | I’m like their nurse, I’ll go and look it up on the internet and research it so that I understand what’s going on so I can help them through it. I’m the one dealing with the doctors and with medications and all of that. |
Caregiver #7 | Speaking to that doctor when I went once myself I think there was a communication issue. He sort of said that he didn’t feel that he didn’t get that she was in as much pain as she was ... I think a lot of people from other parts of the world where medical care isn’t so good they seem to have a greater tolerance for pain than people that are used to getting painkillers and whatever. So I think that’s part of the problem in that she didn’t express to him in a way that he comprehended how much pain she was in. |
Patient #8 | … I never knew you don’t have to pain like you are paining, if that makes sense. I don’t think that’s good English. The pain that I’m going through [prior to pain medication], you don’t have to have that. |
Patient #14 | When I had this pain in my fingers to start with to get out of that they gave me steroids and morphine... I thought steroids were for horses but they were for me too. In the end I thought, “Why make life more difficult than what you’ve already had? Why not accept?” |
Patient #4 (via interpreter) | What has happened she said, when I was new I used to get interpreted but for sometimes now, each time I come they said, “We couldn’t find an interpreter, blah, blah,” a bit of excuse that they make…Yeah, it’s hard. Because I don’t understand what the doctor tells me and the doctor doesn’t understand what I tell him what happened if there’s no interpreter. |
Patient #16 | Nobody there to listen to you. So then I spoke to doctor himself and I told him. I said, “Doctor this is very painful.” New doctor had come. Now that guy also gave some bloody shitty medicine or something. Then he turns around, 2 days later, he said, “It will take time to go because what I’ve given you is just a painkiller.” |