German for nurses: 200 ward phrases

A nurse who moves to Germany arrives with hands that already know the work and no way to say so. That gap is narrower than it looks from outside, and it is very specific. It is the Übergabe, ten minutes of the fastest German anyone will speak at you all day, in shorthand, by somebody who wants to go home. It is the ward's own verbs, lagern and richten and stellen and abzeichnen, all ordinary German words holding down a second job that no dictionary lists. And it is the sentences patients hand you across a bed, Ich habe Kreislauf, Das kriege ich nicht runter, Mir wird schwarz vor Augen, which no textbook prints because no textbook was written at a bedside. This page is 200 of those sentences, The Vocabcord 200 for Nurses, laid out in the order a shift runs: through the changing room, into the handover you take, round the beds and the trays and the tablets, through pain and the call bell and the daughter at the door, and out again at the handover you give.

How to read this list

Each row gives the German, an English rendering, and a note. The note is the column that earns its place, because the ward's own usage lives there and the English cannot carry it. 66 of the 200 rows have one. What catches a foreign nurse out is usually an everyday German word moonlighting inside the hospital. Stellen fills the pots for a medication round. Richten gets a bed, a room or a trolley ready. Die Kurve is the observation chart. When the ward says one thing and the textbook another, this list prints the ward's version and the note flags which is which.

Who is in front of you decides the register, and the line runs straight down the middle of a ward. Sie for patients and their families, always, including the nineteen-year-old in bed two. Du among colleagues from about the second sentence, which is why Kannst du mir kurz helfen? and Kannst du mit mir tauschen? are in du here, while anything said with a patient in earshot is in Sie. Somebody will tell you Auf Station sind wir alle per du early on, and mean it. Doctors are the grey area: some wards are per du with them and some are not, so wait and copy the room. Patients then produce a hybrid nobody warns you about, Schwester or Pfleger with your first name and Sie all the way through, which is ordinary in care.

39 rows carry a tag saying you will hear this and never have to produce it. They are where a competent nurse actually gets stuck, and this list is weighted for them. What you say can be practised at the locker, slowly, as many times as you like. What you have to catch comes at the patient's own pace, in a mouth from Saxony or Swabia, while your hands are full and your head is already in the next room. The pain table runs 9 answers in 14 rows, the highest ratio on the page, and the handover you take runs 7 in 19. Take those two tables and count how many rows land before you have translated them.

Nobody learns 200 phrases in an evening and nobody should try. The app takes the other route: plug the phone in, hear one entry from a downloaded pack, walk away. That is how a list of this size gets through a person without a study slot, and the argument for it sits in One word per charge: why a lesson would fail. While this is still a page, work down one table per shift on the way in.

Take it onto the ward: the printable PDF or the CSV. Quote a row with a link back to this page; a licence for full copies is on the way.

This is a language list

This is a language list. It carries no clinical, legal or safety guidance, and nothing on it tells anyone how to nurse. No doses appear on it and no protocols. Where a phrase touches something consequential, the note glosses the words and goes no further. Ich habe Kreislauf gets a note saying that it is a German lay complaint with no English twin, faint and weak and generally off, and that Kreislaufprobleme is the fuller form. The note ends there. It has nothing to say about what the sentence means for the person in the bed or what happens next. Lagern is glossed the same way: on a ward it is repositioning a body, anywhere else in German it means putting goods in storage, and that is the entire note. What follows a symptom, a refusal or a reading belongs to your training and your ward's own procedure. The distance this page closes is the one between hands that know the work and a mouth that cannot yet describe it in German. On the first half of that it holds no opinion at all.

Arriving: the changing room, the badge, who runs the ward

Start with your own job word. Ich bin die neue Pflegekraft is what the forms and the rota use; Krankenschwester and Pfleger are still said out loud, mostly by patients, often with your first name attached. Wo bekomme ich meine Dienstkleidung? is the written question, and the answer comes back with the spoken word: Kasack, the tunic top hanging in the store cupboard. Then Wer ist hier die Stationsleitung?. The ward manager decides which rooms you take, who walks you round on day one and how your Einarbeitung is planned, so a first morning belongs at that desk rather than at the doctors' office.

The phrases that stop things going wrong

This table sits second because it is the one that keeps you working while your German is still slow. Halt, bitte nicht aufstehen! is the shortest thing in it and the loudest. Halt stops a movement and carries no rudeness in German, and it is said in doorways all day. Ich brauche sofort Hilfe! earns its adverb: Ich brauche Hilfe on its own can wait five minutes on a busy ward, and sofort is the word that makes it now. The hardest line to produce in a new hospital is Da bin ich mir nicht sicher, ich schaue nach. Say it in your first week, in front of people, so that it costs you nothing in your fifth.

Taking the handover

The biggest table on the page, and the ten minutes that decide your morning. Wir machen jetzt Übergabe is fixed, with a verb each way: the shift going home übergibt, the shift coming on übernimmt. 7 of these 19 rows are answers, which is where the difficulty actually sits. Ruhige Nacht, nichts Besonderes hands you a night with nothing in it, and unruhig is its opposite, meaning people were up and calling. Die Vierzehn ist heute Nacht gekommen ambushes every newcomer: room numbers take die, from die Nummer, and for the length of that sentence the room stands in for the person inside it. Ask Auf wen soll ich besonders achten? every morning. It gets you a priority where the rest of the handover gives you a list.

The round and the bed

Die Visite kommt gleich warns the ward and the patient in the same four words, and the tidying starts the moment somebody says Chefarztvisite instead. The verb to take away from here is richten. Das Zimmer muss noch gerichtet werden covers a bed, a room or a trolley being made ready, and vorbereiten is what the same job is called in writing. Keep the two bed sentences apart: Ich mache Ihnen das Bett frisch is clean linen going on, while Bett machen alone is straightening what is already there. And Ich schaue später noch mal nach Ihnen is worth saying even when the patient knows you will be back, because it puts an end on the waiting.

Washing, moving, positioning: what you say to the patient

Sie does not soften when the care gets intimate, which surprises nurses coming from languages where closeness moves the register. Ich helfe Ihnen beim Waschen stays formal, and so does Ich fasse Sie jetzt am Arm an, ja?, where the ja on the end does all the asking. Ich lagere Sie etwas bequemer holds the trap in this table: lagern is repositioning a body on a ward and putting goods in storage anywhere else in German. Then listen for the reply Das schaffe ich noch allein. Noch is carrying the sentence. Still, for now, and please do not take this off me yet, all in one small adverb.

Food, drink and the tray

Two rows here are the patient talking and both are refusals wearing different clothes. Ich habe keinen Appetit is the polite one. Das kriege ich nicht runter is blunt and spoken, and it is about the food going down rather than about liking it, so it says something a complaint about the kitchen does not. On your side, Haben Sie heute schon etwas getrunken? asks about fluids of any kind, while etwas trinken gehen, which looks like its cousin, means going out for a beer. Sie dürfen heute vor der Untersuchung nichts essen und nichts trinken is nüchtern put into words a patient can act on, and vor der Untersuchung is the half they will ask about twice.

The medication round, as spoken

Three of the eleven rows are the patient talking and all three are versions of one moment: Was ist das für eine Tablette?, then Die kenne ich nicht, die nehme ich zu Hause nicht, then Die möchte ich nicht nehmen. The German for passing that on is Ich sage der Ärztin Bescheid, where Bescheid sagen tells somebody and Bescheid wissen is being in the picture already. The verb nobody teaches is stellen. Ich habe die Medikamente schon gestellt means the pots for the round are filled, and the placing and asking senses of stellen have no part in it. Charts sort by time of day here, so morgens, mittags, abends and zur Nacht are column headings before they are adverbs.

Vital signs, and what you report to a doctor

Ich messe kurz Ihren Blutdruck is the patient-facing sentence. Among colleagues the same job is RR messen, said as er-er, after a measuring device nobody has touched in decades, and it is not the kind of thing a language course gets round to. Learn Frau Klein aus Zimmer zwölf, der Blutdruck ist niedriger als heute Morgen as a fixed shape rather than a sentence, because the order inside it is the point and it holds up over a bad phone line. Two answers cost newcomers real time. Ich komme gleich vorbei from a doctor stretches from two minutes to half an hour, and sofort is the one that means now. Messen Sie bitte in einer Stunde noch mal is an instruction you have to catch first time.

Pain, and how a German patient describes it

9 of these 14 rows are the patient talking, the highest proportion in the list, so this is the table to drill. German pain has its own verbs and they do not swap: Es zieht pulls along a limb, stechen stabs, drücken presses, brennen burns, pochen throbs. Ich habe Kreislauf has no English twin at all, a lay complaint meaning faint and weak and off, offered in the grammar of a diagnosis. Ich habe Wasser in den Beinen runs on the same instinct: the patient names what they can see and the chart uses another word entirely. Note also that the scale starts at null, so a bare Sechs is a complete answer.

The call bell: requests, and saying no

Six of these thirteen rows come at you down the call bell, and they are short. Ich muss auf die Toilette is the plain version; older patients often say Ich muss mal and leave the rest off. Mir ist kalt is the one to get right going the other way. It means I feel cold, while Ich bin kalt describes what sort of person you are. Then the refusals, which German softens with a single word instead of a paragraph. Das darf ich Ihnen leider nicht geben uses dürfen for permission where English reaches for can, and leider does the whole apology. Versprechen kann ich Ihnen das nicht is the honest ending when there is no better one.

Relatives at the bedside

Families arrive with two questions and you can answer neither. Wie geht es meiner Mutter? and Was hat der Arzt denn gesagt? both want clinical information, and the denn in the second is the small word that turns a demand into worry. The German for the boundary is Dazu darf ich Ihnen leider keine Auskunft geben, said with the next sentence already attached: Sprechen Sie am besten mit der Ärztin, sie ist ab dreizehn Uhr auf Station. Times run on the 24 hour clock here, and halb drei is half past two rather than half past three, which is the most expensive misunderstanding in this table.

On the phone: the doctor, another ward, the lab

The phone flips the register back to du, because a colleague is at the other end. It also has a fixed opening that nobody teaches: Station drei B, Meier, guten Tag. Ward, surname, greeting, in that order, so the caller knows where they have landed before anything else happens. Ich verbinde is one word followed by silence, so recognise it or you will decide the line has died. One trap here is grammatical: der OP, said oh-pay, is the operating theatre, while die OP with the other article is the operation itself, so Er ist gerade im OP tells you where he is rather than what is happening to him. German hospitals also still fax, and faxen is said out loud.

Documentation, the chart and the handover sheet

Two nouns hold this table up. Die Kurve carries the observations and der Pflegebericht carries the running text about the patient, so asking Steht das schon in der Kurve? when you meant the report gets you a confident wrong answer. Hast du das schon abgezeichnet? brings in a third word and its relatives: abzeichnen is initialling something as done, das Handzeichen is your initials, unterschreiben is a full signature at the foot of a form. The sentence that gets quoted at newcomers is Was nicht dokumentiert ist, gilt als nicht gemacht. Gilt als means counts as, and the whole line is ward lore rather than statute.

Rota, swaps, breaks and overtime

Three verbs run the German rota and none of them is the one you would guess. Tauschen is a straight swap between two people. Einspringen is coming in on a day off, and Kannst du morgen einspringen? is a genuine question with nein among its answers. Ablösen is taking somebody's place so they can leave the floor, which is what Kannst du mich kurz ablösen? asks for before a break. Überstunden are the logged extra hours, and what happens to them has two verbs of its own: abbauen takes them back as time off, auszahlen has them paid. Ich muss mich für morgen krankmelden puts the whole act of reporting yourself sick into one reflexive verb.

Giving the handover, and going home

Handing it back is shorter than taking it, 13 rows against 19, and all of it is du, because you are talking to the shift coming on. Rooms carry the conversation: Wir fangen bei der Eins an, In der Sieben war alles ruhig, Die Neun ist heute Morgen gestürzt, der Bericht ist geschrieben. Ruhig covers a room or a person; the written word for the same thing is unauffällig. The line worth practising is Das ist noch offen, vielleicht schafft ihr das noch. German passes unfinished work on flat, with no apology hung on it, and Das habe ich nicht mehr geschafft is the same move in the morning table. Then Ich mache Feierabend, bis morgen, which is a whole evening in one noun.

Where the list runs out

These 200 end at the hospital door. The flat, the Bürgeramt, the bakery counter and the Sunday when the whole country is shut are somebody else's list, and that one is The 500 German phrases you actually need, grouped by the situations of a day and built to the same rules; it is one of the six inside The Vocabcord 500. If grammar rather than vocabulary is what keeps catching you out, German mistakes English speakers keep making covers the errors that survive a B2 certificate. Sitting under both is the corpus the app already ships, 5,956 graded German entries between A1 and C2.

The balance is what we would change. 39 rows here are answers you have to catch and 161 are sentences you produce, and we would rather it ran the other way. A sentence you own can be drilled at a locker. A sentence somebody else has not said to you yet cannot be drilled at all. We are least sure about how far the ward words travel. Kurve, Kasack, richten and stellen are said in hospitals across the country, but a German ward is a local institution and one that does it differently is right about itself. Austria and Switzerland use other words again, and this list does not go there.

The 200 are on the site now. An app pack with audio comes after, and we are not giving that a date.

Common questions

Do I need B2 German to work as a nurse in Germany?

We cannot advise on that. Recognition of a foreign nursing qualification, registration and language certificates are settled by the authority in the federal state you work in and by your employer, and nothing on this page speaks to any of it. The list itself assumes enough German for a slow conversation, somewhere around B1 to B2, because these rows are ward speech and none of it has been graded down. Passing an exam and getting through a Frühdienst are separate problems, and only the second one is our business.

Is the German on this page the same in every hospital?

The ward vocabulary is standard across Germany and understood everywhere: Übergabe, Kurve, Pflegebericht, Dienstplan, Kasack, lagern, richten, stellen. Colleagues converge on that vocabulary and patients do not, so the accents and the household expressions are where the variation actually lives, which is why the answer rows deserve the extra time. Austria and Switzerland run different words for some of this and sit outside what we checked. Dialect is out of scope.

Sie or du on a German ward?

Sie with patients and their families without exception, and Sie with most doctors until somebody moves it. Du among colleagues from very early, which is why Kannst du mir kurz helfen? and Kannst du mit mir tauschen? sit in du on this page. Patients often produce a hybrid, Schwester or Pfleger plus your first name with Sie all the way through, and that combination is ordinary in care rather than a slip.

Which of these 200 phrases should I learn first?

Start with the 16 rows in the second table, the ones that keep a slow shift out of trouble. Halt, bitte nicht aufstehen!, Ich brauche sofort Hilfe!, Da bin ich mir nicht sicher, ich schaue nach and Da bin ich die Falsche, ich hole Ihnen jemanden. Those four let you keep working in a room whose German is running faster than yours, and the last of them hands a question on without refusing it.

How do I understand what German patients say back to me?

By working at it from the wrong end. 39 of these rows are answers, and they are on the page for exactly this. Read them from the German side: hide the English column and see whether Ich habe Kreislauf, Das kriege ich nicht runter and So eine Sechs, würde ich sagen land before you have translated them. Drill the pain table first; it carries more answers than any other section here. You set the speed of your own sentences and none of the speed of theirs.