The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7504 p656
31 May 2008

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• New professional body
• Minimise errors
• Council election
• The profession
• Dispensing doctors
• Unwanted pregnancy
• The Journal (2)
• Pharmacy robots
• Locum pharmacists
• Pharmacy in academia
• Adverse reactions
• Minority languages
• The Society

Letters to the Editor

Minority languages

Develop multi-language communications

From Mr K. P. Moseley, MRPharmS

In his letter (PJ, 17 May 2008, p595), Bernard Black mentions the difficulty in communicating effectively with patients whose first language is not English.

In one pharmacy I work in, the pharmacy manager sourced a printed list of WWHAM questions translated into Polish, which was useful for his Polish patients.

I am also aware of the excellent Translabel website, which enables pharmacists to translate a selection of commonly used dosage instructions into one of 14 languages. When used for patients whose command of English is not strong, there are opportunities for risk minimisation by being able to print accurate and understandable instructions to accompany the dispensed medicines.

Has any pharmacist ever had an experience of developing or using a multi-language communication tool, perhaps with key words/phrases and pictures (such as body parts), which could be used easily in over-the-counter pharmacy consultations?

Kevin Moseley
Bath

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