Health care talks back in French

Health Canada is investing in French healthcare services so more people can be cared for in their mother tongue.

Sarah Dion-Marquis was working at a radio internship in Winnipeg two summers ago, when she slipped while out on assignment and broke her ankle.

Dion-Marquis, then 18 years old, grew up in Montreal and spoke little English.

"At that point in time, my English was good enough," recalls Dion-Marquis, now studying journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. "But when it really, really hurts, I was just not able to speak because it's still my first language.

"When something really hurts, you just want to say it hurts in your mother tongue, I guess."

Manitoba's 1.1 million residents include about 44,000 Francophones, or 3.87 per cent, according to Canada's 2006 census.

Dion-Marquis made it to a hospital, but the doctor, who didn't speak French, couldn't fully understand what had happened to her until she calmed down a little and remembered some of her English skills. After she told them she had slipped, they called her parents and she left with a cast to wear for two weeks.

Health Canada is trying to help put more French-speaking healthcare providers in places with large Francophone minorities, such as Winnipeg.

'It's a very good amount that will help us get more professionals trained to work in the Francophone communities.'

Late last month, the federal department announced $4 million to create more post-secondary spaces for students to take healthcare majors in French.

"Language barriers continue to exist," said Philippe Laroche, Health Canada spokesperson, in an e-mail. With the aging population, "health care needs are expected to change to include more senior-focused services, such as chronic disease management and home care."

The funding went to the Consortium national de formation en sante, a network of the 11 colleges and universities outside Quebec that offer health programs in French.

The organization will use the extra money, on top of their budget this fiscal year, to create more spaces for healthcare professionals in various fields, says consortium director Jocelyne Lalonde.

"There's never enough, but it's a good start," she says. "It's a very good amount that will help us get more professionals trained to work in the Francophone communities."

The consortium will also create more long-distance healthcare courses in French, as many of Canada's Francophone minority communities are dispersed across the country, and purchase more lab equipment for the French-speaking programs.

A "nearly human" teaching dummy that students can practice treating might cost between $25,000-$35,000, Lalonde says.

New programs in French

The group's main task is to build new healthcare programs in French in places where they do not yet exist, she says.

West of Le College Boreal in Sudbury, Ont., only two campuses offer health programs in French. During the last five years, the consortium has started up 30 new programs in schools that previously did not offer healthcare majors in French, specifically a nursing program in those two western campuses, the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface in Manitoba, and the Sain Jean campus in Edmonton.

Students are flocking more to English healthcare programs because there are simply more spaces, says Dr. Brian Conway, president of the Societe Sante en Francais and on the consortium's board of directors. The consortium will help to create more French spaces and recruit more students.

Canada's current system to address Francophones' needs is "poorly defined." There is actually no system in place to ensure at least one bilingual hospital worker is on shift at all times, for example, he says.

Language is often an issue for Toronto paramedics like Jonathan Paget.

Ideally, the increased number of French-speaking healthcare professionals will make sure there isn't "one nurse doing all the translating."

"People have never perceived it as important," he says of the need for French-speaking services for Francophone minorities. Society thinks Francophones can just get by because they must speak even a little English, he says.

Multicultural model

Jonathan Paget, a paramedic with the City of Toronto, is bilingual and says he often has no problem speaking French to the Francophone patients he treats.

However, "French isn't the problem in Toronto," Paget says. "It's the most multicultural city on the planet. So, we're dealing with literally hundreds of languages every day."

If he cannot communicate with a patient to find out what's wrong and how it happened, he says he'll try to speak through a family member, or sometimes has had to resort to charades or props.

"I've been able to pick up a couple words in a couple languages to ask about pain," he says. As a last option, he can call a language line to get a translator.

Says Lalonde: "What we need is to continue to train more health professionals who can give those services to the community."

Conway says this model to improve French language healthcare services outside Quebec could become a model for other languages in Canada.

When Dion-Marquis fell and broke her ankle, she says the pain was so bad she could barely speak her native French, let alone English.

When it's not urgent, most Francophones can express themselves in English, she says. But when there is an emergency, it's important to have health services "in your own language," she says.