Giving advice in English with ‘SHOULD’ & tips for being in a hospital

Hello, my name is Emma, and we have a special video for you today.

This video is special because we're going to be covering two different things in it.

We're going to be covering some grammar as well as some good life advice for if something

happens to you.

So, what are we talking about specifically?

Well, we're going to talk about if you are ever in the hospital, what is my advice to

you?

I'm going to first teach you about "should", the word "should" and how we use it to give

advice.

And then I'm actually going to give you some really good advice I learned about when I

worked in a hospital that can help people who are in a hospital and they don't really

speak the language at that hospital.

Okay?

So, let's get started by looking at situation.

I hope this situation does not happen to you, but just imagine this.

You live or are traveling to an English-speaking place.

So, maybe you live in the US, or maybe you're traveling to England, or maybe Jamaica, okay?

So, you're in an English-speaking country and what happens?

You get sick, or there's an emergency.

Or maybe somebody in your family or someone you know; someone you know gets sick.

And you or they have to go to the hospital.

Now, you speak some English, okay?

Maybe you speak beginner level English, maybe intermediate, maybe even advanced.

But in the hospital, hospital English is really difficult, even for people whose first language

is English.

There are many new words you're going to hear, and maybe words you might not understand,

okay?

Regardless of what level of English you speak.

So, you speak some English.

You notice when you talk to the doctors or nurses, they speak too fast.

It's too hard to understand what they're saying.

Or you have questions, but you don't know how to ask them properly.

Maybe it's very noisy in the hospital, so you have more difficulty understanding English.

And maybe because you have so much stress.

When you have stress, your English abilities go down.

So maybe, because of your stress, it's really hard for you to understand.

So, what do you do?

Or, what should you do to have the best communication possible for this situation?

What should you do if you're in this situation?

Alright?

So, I'm now going to give you some great advice that I learned while in the hospital that

can really help you or family members or friends, if this ever happens.

Okay, so my first piece of advice, or my first recommendation if you're in the hospital is

to have a piece of paper or a pad of paper close to you.

So, I've written the sentence this way: You should - and I'm using "should", because I'm

giving you advice, and "should" doesn't change, it's always "should".

You should - and now I have a verb here.

You should keep and pen and paper close to you.

Okay?

And notice this is the base form, okay?

It's not in the past, it's not in the future.

To keep, so we're just keeping the verb in the base form.

You should keep a pen and paper close to you.

Why should you keep a pen and paper close to you?

When you're in the hospital, there's going to be a lot of information.

You can ask for a piece of paper or a pad of paper and a pen so when people give you

information, you can write it down.

Okay?

It's also good if there's words you don't understand, you can write them down too.

Or, if you need to communicate.

Sometimes, having the paper there, you can write a key word.

Maybe not the whole sentence, but a key word.

Like, if you want to talk to your family, you can write the word "family" so they understand

what you're talking about.

Or, you know, you might want to draw something, okay?

Maybe you want to eat, and they don't understand you.

Maybe you can draw what you want to eat.

So, just some examples, but having a pen and paper close to you when you're in the hospital

is very, very helpful.

So, you should keep a pen and paper close to you.

My second bit of advice: You should write down words you don't understand and ask or

confirm spelling.

So, what do I mean by this?

There's a lot of words you're going to hear at a hospital.

Words like "stable", "condition", you know, "pulse" "RT" "RN".

There're many different words you might not understand, and especially with important

words, by writing down some key words people are saying, it gives you time to look up the

word later on so you can check a dictionary to see what it means.

And it also lets the nurse or the doctor or the staff know to slow down their language.

When somebody starts writing down key words, the other person tends to talk slower.

And this will help them realize maybe they need to slow down their English.

So, it's a great way to start writing down words, and you can ask, "How do you spell

that word?" or, "Can you say that word again?" and write it down.

Okay?

So, that's my second tip.

And again, we have "You", and I'm giving advice or a recommendation so I use the word "should",

and then I have the verb here, "write down words you don't understand".

And I have another verb here, "confirm or check spelling" with who is talking.

What's my third tip?

You should write down people's names and jobs.

I think everyone should do this, no matter what your language is.

When you're in the hospital, you will meet many different people.

There are many different nurses, many different doctors, many different healthcare practitioners.

Many people with many different jobs, and it's hard to keep track of so many people.

And it can be very confusing, especially if this nurse told you something, and this nurse

told you something else.

And you don't know what's true.

So, it's very good to write down people's names and their jobs, in case you need that

information later, okay?

So, what you can do is you can ask, you should ask, "What's your name?"

So, I've given an example.

So, maybe the person says their name is Karen, so you write down "Karen".

"What's your job?"

Maybe they'll say "physiotherapist", okay.

And maybe you don't know what a physiotherapist is, so you write down "physiotherapist".

And again, you can confirm spelling.

"How do you spell that?"

And you write it down and you can show them the paper then to make sure you have the information

correct.

A lot of the times in the hospital too, people use short forms when they're talking about

their job.

So, instead of saying "physiotherapist", they might say "PT".

Or, instead of saying "dietitian", so someone who decides what you eat in the hospital,

they might call it an "RD".

So, when somebody talks to you and says, "Oh, the SLP is talking to the RD about the RN",

you're not going to understand any of that.

And people who speak English probably won't understand any of that.

So, it's very good to also ask, "What does ______ stand for?"

So, what does SLP stand for?

What does PT stand for?

And then they can give you the full word, okay?

So, if somebody says, "Oh, what's your job?"

"I'm an RD."

"What does RD stand for?"

"It stands for Registered Dietitian."

And again, by writing this stuff down, if you have no idea what that word means, you

can look it up later.

Or you can ask somebody else about it after.

But it's a good idea to write this information down.

Okay?

And again, we have "You", we have our advice word or our recommendation word "should",

and we have our verb.

So now, let's look at some other tips that can really help you if you're ever in the

hospital and you don't speak the language.

Okay, so my fourth piece of advice for if you're in the hospital or someone you know

is, is you should ask people their role.

So, what do I mean by role, okay?

What does this word mean?

Well, it means what is the person's reason, or how are they there to help you?

What do they do, okay?

So, for example, my role as a teacher is to educate you, or to teach you, okay?

That's my role.

A doctor's role is to help you feel better, to help you get better when you're sick.

Or to tell you what's wrong, okay?

That's the role of the doctor.

So, you can ask somebody what their role is, because you might not know the person's job,

okay?

If somebody says, "I'm an occupational therapist", you might say, "Occupational therapist, what's

that?

I don't know."

So, if you don't know what it is, you can ask somebody, "Oh, what is your role?"

And they might tell you something like, "Oh, my job is to help you get dressed."

Or, "My job is to help you walk.

My job is to tell you when you're going home."

Okay?

So, those are the roles.

Again, notice we have our helping word here - sorry, our advice word or our word for giving

recommendations, and that's "should".

It doesn't change.

And we have our verb.

In this case, it's "ask".

Ask is not in the past tense, it's not in the future tense, it's just in its base form.

My fifth tip for you today: You should write your language down and tape it above your

bed.

So, what do I mean by this?

So, this is a picture of a piece of paper, okay?

So, I want you to imagine you have a piece of paper and you can write something on the

paper like, "I speak _____" and your language.

I speak Russian.

I speak Spanish.

I speak Mandarin.

I speak Arabic.

Why should you do this?

Well, you should do this because if you put the language above your bed or at the foot

of your bed, and the doctors see that, it will remind them to speak slowly for you,

okay?

It will help them know that maybe you don't understand everything they say.

And maybe there's somebody in the building who speaks your language.

So, that lets them know, "Oh, okay.

That person speaks Spanish.

I know this nurse speaks Spanish, so I'll bring the nurse with me."

Okay?

So, this is very helpful for the staff to know how to help you, if you write down what

language you speak.

Okay, my next tip: You should ask for an interpreter.

When you're in the hospital, sometimes you have to make decisions.

And these decisions can be really difficult, especially if you don't understand what decision

you have to make.

So, it's very good if the doctors are talking a lot to you about something, you can ask

for an interpreter.

This is somebody who will translate for you and tell you what the doctor is saying and

tell the doctor what you're saying.

Now, sometimes and interpreter is not available, okay?

If this happens, there are many apps or computer programs that can help you with this.

So, for example, Google Translate is a very good program that can help you.

You can type your message of what you want to say and it will play it for the doctor.

And then maybe the doctor can type a message back to you.

So, these are some good ideas to help you get your message across.

And again, for both of these, we have our word "should" to give advice.

And we have our verb here, "write", and we have a different verb here, "ask", okay?

My final point today, point number seven: You should use a communication board or binder.

A communication binder.

So, what do I mean by that?

If you search online, and I will give some great resources in the description of this

video.

If you click on that link, you can actually find a resource where it has pictures of things

you might see in the hospital or people you might see and it has the name of that person

or that thing in English and it might have it in your language too.

So, this can be really helpful if you don't understand what the doctors are saying, or

you can't communicate with them.

So, that way, you can either point to the picture and say, "This is what I want", or

you can maybe read the English or, you know, they can read something in your language.

So, these communication binders of words can be really, really helpful.

Especially if your English level is lower.

So, maybe you're a beginner.

Maybe you've only been speaking English for a couple of months.

Or, you're not confident in your English.

So, a communication board or book can be very helpful.

And again, you can find the link for something like this in our description.

So, thank you so much for watching.

I hope you are never in this situation where you're in a hospital and you can't communicate.

But if you ever are, I Hope you find these tips very helpful.

I also hope you remember how to give advice.

"You should" is just one way, but it's a very common way in English.

And in order to practice this, in our comment section, I would like you to write one sentence

using "You should" to give advice, okay?

You can either give advice for a situation, like someone's in the hospital, what should

they do?

And this could be really helpful for other people to see.

Or, you can give some other advice if you'd like.

If you can't think of a hospital tip.

So, thank you for watching.

You can practice what you learned here by visiting our website at www.engvid.com . So,

there, we will have a quiz where you can practice the different grammar in this video and your

listening, because you can talk about the tips you heard.

You can also subscribe to my channel.

There's many different topics on my channel.

We have things on listening, on speaking, conversation, writing, just so many different

resources that can really help you with your English.

So, thank you for watching.

And until next time, take care.