Italian for doctors: 200 hospital phrases

A doctor who moves to Italy arrives competent and mute, and the distance between those two is narrower than it feels from the outside. Grammar is rarely what closes it. The gap is the ward's own vocabulary (le consegne, la medicheria, il turnario, la lastra), the answers patients hand back before you have finished the question, and the handover, which is the fastest Italian anyone will speak at you all day. This page is 200 of those sentences, The Vocabcord 200 for Doctors, laid out in the order a shift runs: through the door, into the handover you take, round the beds, through a history and an examination, into the conversation with the family and the discharge letter, and out again at the handover you give. Every line is something a person says out loud on an Italian ward, with a note beside it whenever the English column leaves something out.

How to read this list

Three columns: the Italian, the English, and a note. 67 of the 200 rows carry a note, and that is where the ward's usage sits, so read it before you trust the English. Most of what trips a foreign doctor is an ordinary word doing a different job in a hospital. Visitare is to examine a patient, and going to see a friend is andare a trovare. La terapia is the drug chart as often as the treatment. La lastra is what the ward calls the plain film that the report calls una radiografia. Where the ward and the textbook disagree, the row is the ward's and the note says so.

Register splits by who is in front of you. Lei with patients and their families, every time, including the young ones. Tu with colleagues, usually from the first shift, which is why Mi passi le consegne? and Ti disturbo un attimo? sit in tu while everything you say at a bedside sits in Lei. The switch happens mid corridor and nobody announces it. With a primario, start on Lei and let them move it.

26 rows are marked as answers rather than things you say. Those are the harder half. A sentence you produce can be rehearsed in the changing room at your own speed; a sentence you have to catch arrives at the patient's speed, in the patient's accent, while you are holding a stethoscope and thinking about something else. Comprehension under pressure is what actually stops a new doctor, so give those rows more time than the ones you say.

Nobody sits down and learns 200 phrases. Vocabcord plays one entry from a downloaded pack each time the phone goes on the charger, which turns a list into repetition without a study slot; the reasoning is in One word per charge: why a lesson would fail. Until this collection becomes a pack, print the page and work down one table per shift.

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 practise medicine. There are no doses here and no protocols. Where a phrase touches something consequential, the note explains the words and stops. Ho un attacco di fegato gets a note that tells you how Italians use the phrase and stops before anything a doctor would then do with it. That line is where every note in this list ends. The refusal rows work the same way: we tell you what Non voglio firmare means and how fast it arrives, and there it ends. What follows a refusal, a symptom or a phone call is governed by your clinical judgement and by your hospital's own protocol. This page shortens the distance between what you already know and what you can say out loud in Italian. It has no view on the first half of that.

Getting in: the badge, the changing room, who runs the ward

Get your own job title right before anything else. Sono il nuovo specializzando says trainee; a doctor who has finished training is uno strutturato, and calling yourself medico when the ward has you down as a specializzando quietly places you a rank above where you are. Lei è la caposala? earns its place on a first morning, because the caposala runs the practical half of a ward, the nurses' rota, the supplies, the keys and the lockers, and most of what a newcomer wants on day one comes from that desk rather than from the primario. Then A che ora monto domani?. Montare and smontare are how Italians come on and go off shift. Nobody teaches those two verbs and everybody uses them before the first coffee.

The phrases that stop things going wrong

This table sits second on purpose. Fermi un attimo is the shortest thing in it and the loudest: an adjective rather than a verb, everybody stand still, and it is what stops a room. Scusi, non ho capito bene is the one foreign doctors get backwards. Non capisco says you are lost in general, which invites a slower version of the whole explanation. Non ho capito points at the sentence just spoken, which is usually all you needed repeated. The hardest line to say out loud in a new hospital is Non sono sicuro, controllo e le dico, and it is the one that keeps you out of trouble. Say it early and in front of people, so that it costs less later.

Taking the handover

Mi passi le consegne? opens the day. Le consegne is always plural, and it comes with two verbs: prendere le consegne when you take them in the morning, passare le consegne when you hand them on. The four answers in this table are the point of it. Notte tranquilla and Nessuna novità mean the shift has nothing waiting for you. Il dodici è entrato stanotte is the habit that ambushes newcomers: beds stand in for patients all morning, so il dodici is a person, and entrare is how somebody gets admitted. Learn Chi devo tenere d'occhio? and ask it every single time, because it is the question that turns a list of beds into a plan for the morning.

The ward round

Facciamo il giro? is the round. La visita on its own is one patient being examined, so the two are not interchangeable, and mixing them makes a plan for the morning sound like a plan for one bed. Two vocabulary traps live here. Ha fatto il prelievo stamattina? asks about the blood draw itself, while gli esami are the results that come back from it. Manca ancora la lastra uses the spoken word for a plain X-ray, and the report will call the same thing una radiografia. Keep Ne parliamo dopo, fuori ready: it moves a conversation off the end of a bed, and the patient in that bed understands every word of it.

Taking a history

The biggest table in the list, and its six answer rows will cost you more than all the questions put together. Mi dica is two words that hand over the floor, the same phrase a barista uses to take your order. Da quanto tempo? comes back with no verb in it, as da tre giorni or da stamattina, so train your ear on the preposition instead of waiting for a full sentence. Ask Ha portato le scatole? before you ask for a list: le scatole are the medicine packets themselves, and they turn up in a plastic bag. And Che io sappia, no is the standard reply to any have-you-ever question. A subjunctive, meaning not that I know of, and it lands before you have parsed it.

Examining a patient: what you say out loud

Adesso la visito is the sentence to open with. The instructions that follow are all Lei imperatives and they come fast: Si sdrai qui, Si giri su un fianco, Si spogli dalla vita in su. Learn them as fixed shapes and let the grammar catch up later, because a patient half undressed is not the moment to conjugate a reflexive. The row that surprises everybody is Dica trentatré. An Italian chest is listened to on trentatré where an English one gets ninety-nine. The number carries no meaning of its own, which is exactly why nobody thinks to tell you that it changed.

Pain, and how Italians describe it

Ten of the thirteen rows here are answers, which makes this the table with the least for you to say and the most to recognise. Ho la cervicale is the one you will hear most and the one no dictionary prepares you for: an everyday complaint about neck and shoulder pain, sometimes with a headache, offered in the grammar of a diagnosis. Ho un attacco di fegato is its older cousin, a lay expression for feeling heavy and queasy after a big meal, and it says nothing about a liver. Mi sento uno straccio is I feel like a rag, exhausted and unwell at the same time. Then learn the shape of una fitta against un dolore sordo: short and sharp against steady.

Explaining what happens next

Le facciamo un prelievo shows the ward's habit of staying plural. Facciamo, even when one person will do the job, because the hospital is doing it and you are the hospital for the length of that sentence. The short forms are worth memorising as a set: l'eco for l'ecografia, la risonanza for the MRI, la TAC for the CT, all of them spoken, all of them written out in full in the notes. Stia tranquillo is the everyday reassurance, and si calmi is a different animal that lands as an order. End with Se ha bisogno, suoni il campanello, because patients use suonare straight back at you and ho suonato is a sentence you will hear at a bedside.

Consent, signatures and refusal

In writing it is il consenso informato. In speech nobody says more than il consenso, and firmare il consenso is the whole action. Scriva il nome in stampatello is here because in stampatello is printed on Italian forms and said out loud beside them, so block capitals is vocabulary you need on your first morning of paperwork. The three refusals are the rows to recognise instantly: Non voglio firmare, Voglio parlare prima con mia figlia, Voglio andare a casa. What happens after one of them is governed by your hospital's procedure and your own judgement. This table gives you the sentence and the speed it arrives at, and it stops there.

Talking to the family

Adesso non le so dire is the most useful line in this table and the hardest to produce when your Italian is new. It is the honest I cannot tell you yet, built as right now I do not know how to tell you, and it buys time without promising anything. Il medico parla con i familiari dalle due alle tre answers a question you will be asked constantly, because Italian wards keep a fixed hour for family information, so quando posso parlare col medico has a time as its answer rather than a maybe. Al telefono non posso dare informazioni is the other recurring one. Then Dottore, mi dica la verità comes back at you, and no amount of vocabulary makes that sentence easier.

On the phone to another ward

Here the register flips. Everything in this table is tu, because there is a colleague at the other end, and Ti disturbo un attimo? is how a call between doctors opens. Pronto answers a phone and does nothing else; the same word elsewhere is the adjective for ready, and it is never a greeting at a door. The pair to keep straight is Chi è di guardia stanotte? against reperibile: di guardia is on duty inside the building, reperibile is on call from home, and the difference decides whether the person you want is walking to you or getting into a car. Ti mando la richiesta adesso is the paper half of a consulenza, and Me lo puoi mandare per iscritto? is how you ask for it the other way.

Notes, prescriptions and the discharge letter

Devo scrivere in cartella uses the two words the paperwork runs on: la cartella is the chart, il diario is the running progress note kept inside it. Firmo la terapia e arrivo reads oddly in English, because la terapia is both the treatment and the sheet it is written on, and firmare la terapia means the sheet. Le serve l'impegnativa? has no English equivalent worth the name: the impegnativa is the slip that sends a patient to a test or a specialist, and patients turn up already holding one. Finish with Il controllo è tra un mese, since il controllo is the follow-up and torni a controllo is how it gets said out loud.

The rota, the badge and the forms

Dove trovo il turnario? asks for the month's rota; i turni are the individual shifts printed on it, and asking for i turni gets you a different answer. Mi si è bloccato il badge is worth learning as a shape, because that reflexive is how Italians report anything broken: the fault sits on the object instead of on the person holding it, and mi si è rotto, mi si è spento and mi si è bloccato all work the same way. Che modulo devo compilare? uses compilare, the verb for filling in a form; riempire fills a glass or a box. And Non riesco ad accedere al gestionale covers every hospital system there is, whatever brand name sits on the login screen.

Giving the handover

Handing over is shorter than taking it. In consegna c'è poco is a whole sentence and a whole shift: nothing much happened. Il quattro è nuovo di stamattina shows the bed numbers standing alone as subjects, with the gender following the noun behind them, so il quattro from letto and la sei from stanza. The line worth practising is Questo te lo lascio, non ho fatto in tempo, because leaving a job unfinished happens on every ward in every country, and saying so plainly is how it stays ordinary. Then Buon turno, built like buon lavoro, said to the person taking over from you as you go.

Where this list stops

200 phrases cover a shift and stop at the hospital door. For the flat, the bank, the pharmacy counter and the first opinion at somebody's dinner table, the general list is The 500 Italian phrases you actually need, built the same way and grouped by the situations of a day; it sits inside The Vocabcord 500 with five other languages. Behind both is the graded corpus already in the app, 5,956 Italian entries from A1 to C2.

The balance is what we would change. 26 rows here are answers you have to catch, and we would rather that number were higher, because production rehearses well in a changing room and comprehension does not. We are also least sure about regional spread. La medicheria, il turnario and l'impegnativa travel across the country, but some of the habits in this list will be commoner in one hospital than in the next, and a ward that says it differently is right about its own ward.

These 200 are on the website now. Audio and an app pack follow, and we are not putting a date on that.

Common questions

Do I need B2 Italian to work as a doctor in Italy?

We cannot advise on that. Registration, language certificates and immigration are settled by the medical council, the region and your employer, and nothing on this page is an answer to any of them. What we can tell you is what this list assumes: enough Italian to hold a slow conversation, roughly B1 to B2, because the rows are real ward speech rather than graded sentences. Certificate Italian and ward Italian are separate problems, and this list is aimed at the second one.

Is hospital Italian the same across Italy?

The ward vocabulary here is standard and understood everywhere: la cartella, le consegne, il turnario, la medicheria, l'impegnativa. Patients vary more than doctors do, in accent and in the everyday expressions they reach for. Where a word has a spoken form and a written one, la lastra against la radiografia, the note gives both. Dialect is out of scope.

Lei or tu with colleagues in an Italian hospital?

Tu with colleagues, usually from the first shift, which is why Mi passi le consegne? and Mi copri il turno di sabato? are in tu on this page. Lei with patients and their families, every time. With a primario, start on Lei and let them move it.

Which of these 200 phrases should I learn first?

The 16 in the second table, the ones that stop things going wrong. Fermi un attimo, Scusi, non ho capito bene, Non sono sicuro, controllo e le dico and Non sono la persona giusta, le chiamo il medico di reparto. Those four let you work in a room whose Italian is running faster than yours.

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

That is the harder half, and it is why 26 rows in this list are answers rather than questions. Read them backwards: cover the English and see whether Che io sappia, no, Ho la cervicale and Un sette, forse otto land before you have translated them. You do not control the speed of an answer, and the pain table is the one to drill for it.