"I'm his wife, I can interpret" Entitled woman gets pissy when she can't interpret due to facility policies, and gets nutso when the "husband" outs her lie
I worked at an outpatient oncology treatment facility years ago as a nurse. This was in area with a Spanish speaking population. We had 2 interpreters on staff who were certified for medical interpretation. The hospital system who owned the facility has policies in place that family members, spouses, or friends can't interpret for patients due to liability issues and concerns with medical terms not being properly interpreted and the possibility of family members, SOs, etc not interpreting everything medical staff, admin, or social work need to communicate to the patient and interpreters are also used for assurance of unbiased interpretation. I grew up with grandparents who spoke both Spanish and English so I can understand Spanish ok, but I'm not great at conversations.
I often assisted with intake for patients starting treatments. We knew we had a Spanish-speaking male in his 50s coming in to start reatment. We had referal records that listed adult kids as emergency contacts. One of the interpreters and I went along with one of the oncologists to the lobby area to meet the patient. Now with oncology treatments, we would see different situatons with patients and their support systems. Sometimes, spouses came with them or it was other family members or friends. Interpreter identifies herself as an interpreter to patient and introduces the doc and I to patient. The woman with the patient identifies herself as his "wife" and she tells us that she will be handling interpretations. We explain to her that the facility doesn't allow spouses or family member to interpret and we state the reasons why. She got upset with us and said that other places allow her to interpret for him.
She calls us assholes and says we are purposely giving her and her "husband: a "hard time" and dragging things out. The doc asks her politely to let us do our jobs so intake can be handled and we can send him to one of the treatment rooms. The doc through the interpreter goes over medical info. Since it's outpatient treatment center, we often had situations in which patients would be dropped off for treatments and the person who dropped them would leave and then come back to pick them up and we always made sure we had that person's contact info in case of emergencies. Interpreter asks patient if his wife will be staying in the waiting room or leaving and coming back for pickup. Patient tells interpreter that the woman he's with is a live in girlfriend and they aren't married. The woman flips out at him and cusses him out in Spanish and she was pretty nasty. She got nasty with us and the patient asked her to leave, she refused and was causing a huge scene and doc got fed up and call security to escort her out. It was fitting to see that.
I did feel bad for the patient because the girlfriend was a loon. Luckily she never tried to come back to the facility.