

I work in 911 dispatch, so getting people to calm down, stop what they’re doing, and listen to me is kind of a big part of my job. Things are of course a bit different in-person than over the phone, but here’s generally how I’d approach something like this.
If you know their name, use it. A lot. People respond to their name, that’s kind of the whole reason names exist. It will get their attention which is half the battle.
Getting them to calm down from there is the other half, and it’s not easy, especially if you don’t speak their language. Body language and tone of voice goes a long way though.
Not that they’re going to understand you in this situation anyway, but remember that no one in the entire history of calming down has anyone ever actually calmed down after being told to calm down. Don’t even bother trying that.
Try to get them to take some deep breaths, use some gestures.
Your hospital really should have access to some sort of translation service, either humans on location there in the room with you who speak the language, or some kind of service like languageline (not plugging them specifically, I have a lot of complaints about some of their interpreters, they just happen to be who we use at work) that you can call up and get on speakerphone. Google translate and such are wonderful tools, but they’re not perfect and sometimes you really want that bit of a human touch. I’ve also occasionally had some great interpretors who will chime in with some helpful bits like “they’re saying’this’ but in our culture that usually really means ‘this’”
If you can find an excuse to hand them something, maybe some paperwork, that can also sometimes kind of create a little bit of a break in whatever they’re doing for you to work with. They’ll probably stop screaming for a second to look at what was just handed to them, and then you can try to work on something.









I think we’re going to need a little more context on who he is and how he’s using the word “goy”
It comes from Hebrew/Yiddish, so it’s a word used predominantly by Jewish people, and so not inherently antisemitic. It basically means non-jew, it’s roughly synonymous with the term “gentile” that you might be more familiar with if you’ve had a Christian upbringing.
How Jews use it of course varies a lot, plenty just use it without any particular deeper meaning, just a matter-of-fact statement that the person they’re referring to isn’t Jewish.
Some of course do use it with a bit of Malice if they value non-jews less highly than their fellow Jews.
I’ve also heard it used, usually somewhat jokingly, by Jews to refer to other Jews who aren’t acting in a way that they think is in accordance with Jewish customs. I remember one time my one Jewish friend who keeps kosher (kind of, he definitely bends the rules more than a bit) was teasing another Jewish friend who had ordered a bacon cheeseburger or something while we were out grabbing lunch, calling him a goy and lumping him in with the rest of the non-jews sitting around the table. It was all in good fun, just a bunch of guys joking around over a couple beers.
Again, I’m sure there’s some Jews out there who would do something like that and mean it as an actual insult.
If the person saying it isn’t Jewish themselves, that’s where you might have a case for their use being antisemitic.
I’m not Jewish, I could definitely see myself using goy or a handful handful of other jewish words and phrases I’ve picked up when I’m joking around with my Jewish friends. I might even call one of them a goy jokingly like in that bacon cheeseburger situation. Mostly though I’d probably use it to refer to myself, like if they were talking about, let’s say a Chanukah celebration, and I didn’t understand what they were talking about, I might tell them to need to explain it again in “goy” for me.
But if I’m not with friends that I have a good rapport with, I probably wouldn’t joke like that, I don’t want to give the wrong impression that I’m genuinely criticizing them for not being Jewish “enough,” as a non Jew I really don’t think it’s my place to be making that kind of judgement.
And I certainly wouldn’t be using it seriously to criticize Jews. I wouldn’t call Israeli Zionists goys (goyim I believe is actually the proper pluralization) based on their Zionist beliefs, there’s plenty of totally secular terms I can come up with to criticize them.
I could also see an antisemite using Jewish terms like goy in a mocking fashion, which, yeah that’s pretty antisemitic, basically the same thing as a white supremacist making fun of a black person for using AAVE.
And of course, depending on the person, the tone, how they’re using it, their target audience, etc. it could be totally non-problematic.