Come Again? In NYC, Rx Info In Foreign Languages
1 CommentBy Ed Silverman // November 17th, 2008 // 5:02 pm
Forever known as the big melting pot, New York City is where who-knows-how-many different languages are spoken. So it stands to reason that it just may be useful to have prescription info available in something other than English.
So after an investigation by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, two big drug chains, CVS and Rite-Aid, will now provide spoken and written translations to customers in Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Russian, French and Polish. (Sorry, no Korean, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek or Swahili, among others, so those folks will have to know English or pray they can avoid allergic reactions and side effects).
This raises a couple of thoughts. One: who should or will take responsbility for these translations? Imagine the concerns among pharmacists and drugmakers over legal liability. The other is this: what about those of us who already speak English? Shouldn’t there be a translation that makes it easier to understand product labeling? Skip the irony. Those abbreviated print-outs don’t cut it.
Hat tip to PAL blog
RPh
Having worked in border communities and in NYC this is doable.
Computers can print out instructions in any language you need, and as for basic counseling on how to take or store, cards with standard phrases in the language can be used. More detailed counseling might require a family member or technician who’s bilingual or a centralized call in center to answer questions. However it can be done.
Typically however people who speak a particular foreign language live in certain areas and you can hire pharmacist and technicians from those communities.
You can’t do 100% but you can do it for the majority of the people if you make a reasonable attempt.