I worked for a while at a hospital that had a good proportion of Spanish-speaking patients.  Some were Spanish-ONLY-speaking.  We had one sweet older lady in a room near the desk.  She was continually yelling in Spanish...not angrily, but as if she wanted something.  Occasionally, on the night shift, we didn't have anyone bilingual working on the floor, so we would try to figure out what she wanted any way we could.  Due to fair assignment of patient care, she did not always have one of the limited number of bilingual nurses assigned to her on the day shift either.  We didn't realize how often we all said the same things to her until one night her Spanish turned into "How are you doing?  How are you doing?"  At least one of us was bilingual!

At that same hospital, there was an elderly Spanish-only gentleman who kept getting out of bed...a definite no-no for him.  I, myself, became bilingual for a while.  I learned to say "Stay in your bed, please" in Spanish.  That, "adios", "guacamole", and "cerveza" were about the extent of my Spanish.  Hey, you learn what you think you'll need to know!