Certified Drug Label Translations in 26 Languages for Limited English Proficient Patients with Sharon Blank RxTran

And so what happens currently when a patient can't read the label on their bottle?

Yeah.

So, um, when currently right now... well, first, um, you know, there's, there are sort of, um, three real issues in, um, in that situation.

Um, and the dangerous outcomes include the patient won't take the medication because they're fearful, or they take the wrong dose or at the wrong time.

And what we hear time and time again is that they rely on an untrained relative, neighbor, or friend to translate, and all of these just really potentially cause great harm.

And would you say that these labels are not designed to be that well understood in the first place, no matter what language people are speaking?

Uh, so I think we've come a long way on that, and I think, um, there's been a lot of progress made so that people do understand because more and more healthcare is falling in the home than ever before.

So I do think that there's been significant strides made on the English side.

That being said, uh, you know, we are not holding ourselves to the same standard of care for our LEP patients.

And I suspect that some words don't translate very easily.

I'm thinking of-

Uh, no, they don't.

Uh, so one word I've seen on labels is "use sparingly." I, I'm not even sure what that means.

So can you point to any words that are particularly troublesome in this environment?

Um, there, there's plenty, and that is why, again, we do not even just use trained linguists.

We use pharmacists to certify these translations.

And I'm sure everyone is familiar with, you know, the idea and the growing thought behind, "Oh, well, we can just put it in Google and let Google translate it." But again, you know, are you-- would you take that kind of solution for a medication you were going to perhaps give your child and just assume that it's correct? You know, I always like, Karen, to use the example to just kind of help personalize it for everybody, which is, you know, if I were traveling in, let's say, Japan, and I were to take ill, and I end up, you know, getting a prescription and handed a pill bottle and go back to my hotel with this prescription written in a character language that I totally don't understand, and that's what these people are facing every day here in the US- They're not-- it means nothing to them, and that's pretty scary.