The hospital and the diagnosis

The third entry is a credencial, and an English reader will take it for a word they already own. « Credentials », in English, are always about a person: the degrees, the letters after a name, the badge that says what somebody is qualified to do. A surgeon has credentials; a reporter shows press credentials at the gate. The Portuguese noun is not about the holder at all. It is a written authorisation for one particular thing, and in the health service it is the slip the family doctor writes so that the hospital will open an outpatient appointment: passar uma credencial, trazer a credencial, a consulta só se marca com credencial. What English calls that document is « a referral », or in full « a referral letter », and the verb behind it is « to refer »: the family doctor refers the patient to a specialist. The two words do cross in one place, which is what makes the mistake hard to see: login details are as credenciais in Portuguese and « credentials » in English. That single overlap persuades a reader that the rest of the word matches too.