Re the translation issue - I do find it hard to believe that in three weeks the husband couldn't find anyone to translate. Perhaps not immediately on the first day, but over three weeks?
The tour company
The insurance company
Credit card
US consulate
Hotel where husband must have been staying for three weeks
The internet

But do find it hard to believe there was not someone working at the hospital who didn't speak English. Venice is a major tourist city with thousands of non Italian speakers visiting.

Virtually all US hospitals have translation services. Not "in person" but via phone. The hospital I work in has posters in the elevators (the first place people go usually) advising of translation services in something like 30 languages. All the nurses know of the existence of this service and offer it to anyone not fluent in English.

I think it's important to say this so that someone reading this thread doesn't fear going to Italy due to language barrier.

Whilst everyone is always sympathetic towards someone who suffers an injury on holiday abroad this posting requires some observations which others have raised - thursdaysd, pariswat, tulips and others.

1. Too many have blamed the boat captain. The OP mentioned an escort who I presume spoke some English. This seems very much a case of "Lost in Translation". The boat company may have strict rules about how they should respond in such situations. Did your husband do anything to investigate this during the 3 weeks you were in bed? However, I think the escort or tour guide is much more responsible but obviously this will depend upon exactly what the relationship was.
2. It appears that, medically speaking, you were well treated. And essentially for free! How much would a 3 week stay in a US hospital plus an operation have costed to a Venetian on holiday in the US? $50,000 or more? Your ingratitude is amazing. You also mention trip insurance. How would it have helped since you paid next to nothing for your medical treatment?
3. Four a room? What do you expect for free treatment!
4. "NO ONE spoke English" - pathetic.
5. The person who you should most be annoyed with is your husband - your posting is littered with complaints that he could have dealt with. The most obvious is the question of a translator. Perhaps if you were only in ER for a few hours I can understand the difficulty. But 3 weeks!

You should be praising the Italian health service and the huge saving you encountered rather than cursing it.

Re the hospital conditions: first off, dishes are not 'sterile' anywhere. Medical equipment that has gone through a sterilization process (autoclave) is sterile but nothing else in a hospital is.

Hospital gowns vs own pajamas. There are actually good reasons why hospital gowns are normal practice in many hospitals (US and some other countries). One, it's easier to get at the patient's body for nursing/medical care. Two, cuts down on the amount of germs being spread around (nosocomial infections are a major cause of illness, increased hospital stays, and even death) (nosocomial infections are those acquired in a hospital).

Same thing with multi-bed rooms. Fewer the number of beds in a room, the less transmission of infection. And not just from patient to patient, also visitors bring in germs. If you are recovering from surgery you are at high risk for infection and if you are in a room with 3 other patients and they all have visitors (bringing in all their food and pjs) that's a lot of potential germs you are coming in contact with. On the other hand, US hospitals have taken things a bit too far with many hospitals now competing or patients by offering hotel style amenities which of course adds to increased costs. Why people can't just use common sense and provide care that is based on scientific evidence but not go crazy with competition for fanciest rooms and best food,etc.

"You should be praising the Italian health service and the huge saving you encountered rather than cursing it."

I am pretty much in this camp. I read the OP thinking "Ugly American".

Your expectations are tempered by your experiences in US hospitals. Surprise! You are in Italy. You chose to go there. English is not the official language there, just as Italian is not the official language here. You had a bad experience, but it seemed to work out well in the end. I think your expectations were way too high, considering the kind of medical systems that stress cost and efficiency over customer service and niceties.

TA pulled this pretty quickly

https://www.tripadvisor.ca/ShowTopic...ce_Veneto.html

I too am a little dubious about the three weeks without a translator thing but glad the OPs surgical outcome was so positive, which of course is the most important thing.

I had a different Italian hospital experience - during our first week of 2 months in Rome I stumbled and injured my wrist. I went to the hospital on Isola Tiberina the next day as it was pretty swollen. They quickly found an English speaking doctor who was terrific - I had xrays and he was a little concerned there was a hairline fracture so recommended a partial splint for a couple of weeks. Ordinarily they don't see tourists back again (as they aren't staying long) but because we were there for almost two more months I returned to have the splint removed and then had a couple of physio sessions. (all very modestly priced). Never had any problem communicating. And we discovered a bar/cafe in the lobby so Richard had a pleasant place to wait.

To this day when we're at a hospital in Toronto we joke about where is the bar?

@nochblad - since you mentioned my name...

I never mentioned the boat captain. My interest was, and still is, the "escort". The OP has been asked repeatedly to clarify whether this was a tour company guide, and if not what kind of "escort". And certainly, if s/he was a local, s/he should have called the emergency numbers.

I have also said, several times, that open wards are the norm in Europe, not something peculiar to this specific hospital.

I agree about costs. When I broke my wrist in Switzerland (hardly a cheap country) the cost for Xrays, anesthesia, surgery to insert pins, one night in a six bed ward and all bills for medical personnel cost the same as a brief out patient procedure to remove the pins back in the US.

BTW, I suspect the need for the three week stay was because in Europe broken bones are kept in traction, while this seems not to be the case in the US. Since my arm was not in traction I had a painful and lengthy PT recovery after the cast came off.

thursdaysd - reread my posting. I never linked you to the boat captain.

Funny thing though - Comment has been removed by Fodor's moderators

They seem to be pretty active today - a Sunday.

Who at TA is so active and where is he/she based? Curious.

Ah nochblad - not enough caffeine. Need to adjust to the time change.

"Pariswat is becoming more intolerable as day after day.

Time to sign a petition to get him banned from Fodors."

Whatever floats your barge, but clude me out.

This time, I think he is close to spot on.

Can you even imagine what a non-English speaking Italian in the same situation here would encounter? Maybe they would get some translation help, maybe not or not much.

OK, the room would be nicer, etc.



But at the end there would be , ahem, a bill....$50k? $100k?

Who died and made American tourists God's gift to the world?
How much money should be allocated in the Italian HC system to pat the a$$es of Americans, above and beyond giving them treatment in the same fashion as the natives who are paying the bills for them?

"Do the staff in NYC speak Italian french and Chinese ?""

I don't know about NYC but my South Florida hospitals in a well known tourist area (Broward Co. and Miami Dade Co.) have STAFF that speaks French, Spanish, Russian, Creole, Persian, Hebrew, German, Roumanian, Italian, Arabic, Albanian and British English. If these aren't enough choices, translators are available.

In an American hospital you would be the one to sign for a blood transfusion, not your husband, unless it was an emergency or he could show power of attorney for healthcare documentation.

Emergencies occur in front of other patients and need to be treated promptly. Wouldn't you want to have been treated if you had gone into respiratory distress?

I do believe every sick person deserves a private room no matter their circumstances or location. However, that isn't always possible. In the hospital where I work most of the rooms are still double rooms and the ER is a ward with curtains but that really doesn't provide much privacy. When I first started working there we had a 4 bed ICU room and no one in there got any sleep or privacy.

The standard of care in the US is now to remove catheters as soon as possible but it hasn't always been that way. Perhaps the standard in Italy is different.

How much were you charged for your care? It would have been a slight fortune in the US if you didn't have insurance.

I can’t comment on the lack of an English interpreter in Venice but I did want to offer some perspective on how that might have gone in an American hospital. I work in emergency services and have for about 20 years though I am by no means an expert. The county I live in (outside DC) has 4 hospitals. 1 has a Spanish interpreter on staff; the other 3 use a little wheeled cart to video conference in an interpreter. The ER’s have 1 each so, if 2 patients need it at the same time, too bad. Otherwise, there might be another 1 or 2 in each facility. Will staff members track it down and wheel it in for every little thing? Of course not. Important procedures will he explained in the patient’s language but simple intervention will be mostly pantomime or the nurse who took that language in high school with some Google Translate thrown in. So, yeah, you were treated (with regard to the language issue, at least) just like an Italian speaker would have been treated in the US. It sounds like you got good care and the language issue made things tough but not impossible. I always get travel insurance with medical repatriation and this post is a great reminder to continue doing so. I’ve worked with a few nurses over the years who were repatriating patients and they’re pretty neat people. Verrrrry patient and understanding!

It would be great if every patient has their own room; it's just not the way it is - at least in Belgium and the Netherlands (and from reading this post, Italy).
In the Netherlands they will even put men and women in the same IC unit. In Belgium you can pay extra for a private room, if it's available.

Perhaps one of the reasons that US healthcare is so expensive? Better to be treated in a ward, than not at all.

The OP's complaint is copy-and-pasted all over the internet, even on obscure blogs. The agenda to trash seems clear.

It's unfortunate because serious accidents do happen while people travel, but very few people wish to come forward and write about their experience after they come home.

This seemed like a worthwhile opportunity to talk about a scary experience in a way that truly informs and helps other travelers. But with this "trash" agenda, the motive and intent seems tarnished. With all the unanswered questions and a serious lack of gratitude, readers are left scratching their heads.

I've had my own personal experience with a few hospitals in Italy. I was once, briefly, a volunteer translator at Ospedale Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. I've never been in any Italian hospital that remotely came close to the experience one can find at NYU Langone or Mt. Sinai in NYC, or the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals in Ohio. Even so, competent, caring service can be found in Italy. And the cost to tourists is remarkably affordable.

Venice is a particularly problematic location because the local population is so small. Many locals go to the mainland these days for serious health care related issues. A day may come when Venice no longer has a hospital. Good luck finding a husband who will carry his wife over the causeway.

Assuming this story is true it is indeed horrific, but it's a bit suspicious coming from a first time poster. My experience with the Italian health care system was actually quite good, although my illness wasn't nearly as serious as this injury.

In 2014 I went to Italy where I caught bronchitis and I had a throat infection. I asked the hotel manager for help and he went with me to the doctor to translate. I had no appointment but the wait to see the doctor was only 30 minutes. The doctor gave me 4 prescriptions which cost me a grand total of €8. That's for ALL 4 prescriptions, not each. I was more than willing to pay the doctor as I'm not an Italian citizen but he said it wasn't necessary.

Most Americans DON'T have access to hospitals like Langone or Mt. Sinai. So if the story is true, that would not be a fair comparison anyway. My mother was hospitalized due to a stroke for a few weeks. No open ward, but the physical accommodations sure didn't reflect the price tag. I don't think the "luxuries" of provided gowns and cutlery are responsible for the cost of hospital care in the US.

Good point about the possibility of no hospital in Venice. A lot of rural American communities are in that situation. If it's something minor, the local hospital can treat it, but for serious cases, air ambulance is necessary. If the OP had the same break in a national park, and was treated at the closest hospital, the main difference would have been cost as some posters have pointed out. It would have been much, much higher, even if her spouse could carry her back to the car and drive to the ER.

I don't think the "luxuries" of provided gowns and cutlery are responsible for the cost of hospital care in the US>

Heck no - doctor's salaries are much higher I suspect as are charges for everything.

I only wish EVERYONE in States had access to free or affordable and decent health care like in Italy and most of Europe and the so-called advanced countries.

To the OP:

Did you contact the insurance company straight on, or did you wait? I just wonder how long it took for the to get on the case? could you not have gone home much earlier? How did hospital prevent you from checking out??

Did the tour company do nothing at all apart from confirming the need for surgery on the part of tour escort? What was the name..I missed it in the long thread above....

Very scary to be sickk overseas, or away from home. But it's just a risk of travel...at least the end result was ok.....sorry for your troubles. There have been some stories here on Fodors that were even worse than this one. A lot worse, in fact.

"I only wish EVERYONE in States had access to free or affordable and decent health care like in Italy and most of Europe and the so-called advanced countries."

I agree, but stop calling it FREE. It is paid for by the people, for the people and less of it goes in the pockets of CEOs and politicians. The SO-CALLED advanced countries have decided to put their citizens health a lot higher on the priority list than we in the US do.

eks - no you didn't miss it. The OP has not provided it.

As rs899 says. Free at point of service, universal coverage, but paid for by taxes. (Or in some countries I think heavily regulated and required insurance?)

<i><font color=#555555>""Most Americans DON'T have access to hospitals like Langone or Mt. Sinai.""</font></i>

Isn't that obvious? You need to be in NYC and in need of emergency treatment first.

<i><font color=#555555>""that would not be a fair comparison anyway""</font></i>

I wasn't making any direct comparison.

I can't speak for every state, but hospital emergency rooms in the U.S. are not permitted to turn emergency patients away by law. There are certain conditions, but insurance is not one of them.

If you are a tourist in NYC and you break a bone after falling on the sidewalk, your EMS driver will most likely take you to the hospital of your choice, and you will receive excellent care. Don't be surprised if a fire truck shows up at your injury location because the Fire Department in NYC often works in tandem with EMS.

From the New York State Department of Health:

<i>"Re: Emergency Patient Destinations and Hospital Diversion

A patient's choice of hospital or other facility should be complied with unless contraindicated by state, regional or system/service protocol or the assessment by a certified EMS provider shows that complying with the patient's request would be injurious or cause further harm to the patient."</i>

Everyone should know the best medical care is found, generally speaking, at a University Hospital or a teaching facility. Italy has plenty of these, but Venice does not. The closest teaching hospitals to Venice are in Padua, Verona, Udine, and Trieste.

If you have a serious, life-threatening accident while visiting Venice, your choices for state-of-the-art care are not present.

Not in Venice but Paris, when my mother ended up in a hospital for a few days near the Bastille. None of her medical team spoke English, in fact nobody on the floor spoke English, and she was in a ward.

Our perspective was totally different from the op. We were thrilled she was in a safe place, receiving excellent care, and it wouldn’t have occurred to us that we should have had a translator provided for us by the hospital.

I am not downplaying how frightening and different an experience it was for the op, but really, if you want it to be just like home, then stay home. Horrors! NOBODY SPOKE ENGLISH! In Italy! Btw, I thought ugly American, and vindictive too.

Right. But it's not applicable unless the op is from NYC. There seems to be some kind of expectation by them that their experience would be superior in an American hospital, that somehow the Venice hospital provided them with subpar care. I don't see anything in their post that would indicate that. At any rate, they didn't actually have a life threatening accident, so I'm not sure why a teaching hospital is relevant.

And no, you can't get turned away from ERs. That's why they are generally overcrowded because if you haven't got insurance, that's where you end up for ANY kind of treatment.

The doc I was talking to said the following :
- still losing your time on that forum ? (Hem)
- nobody spoke English ?
Very strange. All doctors nowadays speak at least broken English.
Parts of the training is done based on English documentation. Seminars (international) are all in English.
Every doc speaks some English. Younger speak better.

As for ugly American I'd substitute with ugly tourist.
I can name some European Who would complain in the same way.

All the docs I know and I know quite a few speak English french docs Belgian docs and German docs . Some better than myself most have difficulties mastering the language of Shakespearebut will find their way.

Pretty funny, pariswat. Agree, ugly tourist. Or maybe just ugly patient. I've heard some pretty terrible stories from my nurse friends.

It's kind of weird to me because English speakers were so easy to find in Venice. They're everywhere. That was probably the easiest place on my trip other than London language wise.

And then there's the fact that half the time I don't really understand what a doctor is talking about, even in fluent English, I just trust him or her to fix me up. I'm not sure the language barrier would bug me that much. If the pain goes away, I'm good.

Of course, ugly tourist. My bad.

FWIW (which I'm sure is very little): My reaction to the very first post on this thread was that we had a teachable moment. My kudos to every person on this thread who offered useful information, if not to the OP, then at least to any future readers – info about where / how to get translation services, what to look for in travel insurance, what to expect (or not expect) in medical treatment in a country not one’s own, etc.

Although it obviously seems to matter to some of you, I honestly don’t care whether this was the OP’s first or millionth post, whether she posted only here or on every website she can find, or even whether the situation she described actually occurred or was crafted as part of a research project to assess how people react. (If so, s/he certainly got a range of responses!) JMO.

Curious the OP has yet to name tour company.

I live in fear of just such an accident when traveling now that I'm over 75. Used to keep membership with Medjet, the medical evacuation service, but after 75 they require a yearly letter from one's physician attesting health status as okay to travel along with a hefty increase way above the rate I was paying prior.

Three weeks in hospital? Cathaterized the entire time? No English spoken? Something very wrong with this picture.

"Free" healthcare here is a compulsory insurance of about €100 a month for basic care, for everyone over the age of 18, plus additional optional insurance to cover things like dental care, physiotherapy etc. Plus you pay for the first €385 of care per year, though visit to your GP remain free.
That is in addition to the contribution made through taxes to help pay for it all and to cover long the term care of severely physically or mentally handicapped people.

The insurance premiums for 2018 are due to be announced this coming week. They will be considerably higher than this year no doubt.

There is clearly no such thing as free healthcare - someone has to pay for it, usually the taxpayer. I resent Americans getting free healthcare in Europe at the expense of the local taxpayer.

I don't resent it. We have a good system that works (ed) and if some tourists get the use of it for ´freé well it is nt a problem.
It becomes a problem when they complain about cutlery.

When I was a volunteer in pédiatric oncology an African was brought from home to our Belgian hospital.
It was party time in the village the boy said : he was sent to Europe. He would be taken care of, cured and would come back.

I love to think my taxes are spent this way.
I am a good socialist sometimes

I agree with travelchat. If anyone needs to be named and shamed, it should be the tour company, but the OP is cagey about naming them.
It’s not unknown for a tourist to have an accident on holiday. There may even be the occasional death.
A reputable company would have a local rep who could speak the language and know how to deal with an emergency.
Something doesn’t quite ring true

As someone else has pointed out, at least readers of the thread will have gained useful information. This looks like a useful site http://europeforvisitors.com/venice/...nal-safety.htm

My money is on the OP being a troll. The event she described probably never happened at all. If any of it happened, then she likely embellished much of it to gain more sympathy.

I bet she’s part of the effort to discourage visitors from visiting Venice. Next we’ll hear about spiders in the bed and clowns scaring people.

You make my morning, xcountry! Can you imagine, a campaign of red balloons mysteriously appearing across Venice:)

It's interesting that the last few "scary" stories of bad things happening to tourists were also set in Italy - at least the stories that have been posted to Fodor's. In one story people in a train car were "gassed" and their valuables stolen. In another, people sleeping in a villa were "gassed" and their valuables stolen.

I agree this thread has unearthed some valuable information about healthcare in Italy/Europe, but I also agree it is fiction. At any rate, the OP should stay in the USA and break her bones there and deal with the sorry state of American healthcare.

Probably worth noting again that the World Health Organization rates Italy 1 in healthcare in the world and the USA somewhere around 39, below Nigeria normally.

The no-English in Italian hospital BS is just that. So is the nameless tour company.

The no-English in Italian hospital BS is just that.>

Yes most 'educated' Italians speak some English or certainly would be someone there who did?

I don't believe OP is necessarily a troll but had a bad experience and making it sound as bad as possible.

<i>Yes most 'educated' Italians speak some English or certainly would be someone there who did?
</i>

Maybe in Venice and other large cities of Italy, but not in Piazza Armerina, Sicily as we experienced it. My experience is that English in Latin countries is less common than in northern European countries.

My experience is that English in Latin countries is less common than in northern European countries.>

Yes true to me too - but in Naples ER and Florence ER I encountered staff speaking English - but like OP can't make sweeping generalizations.

Bigger the country the less they speak English IME.