Thread: Mislabeled Prescriptions Putting Spanish Speakers at Risk

Mislabeled Prescriptions Putting Spanish Speakers at Risk.

By Soni Sangha

Published April 05, 2011

When an elderly patient asked Isabela to hand her three tablets, the home health attendant froze.

The patient had read the label, which had been translated from English to Spanish, and it instructed her to take three tablets every time she took the medicine. Isabela, who did not want her last name used, knew from experience – and a phone call to the doctor confirmed her hunch – that the correct instruction should have been to take one tablet three times a day.

The medication label, it turns out, had been wrongly translated.

Because most states don’t require pharmacies to provide translated materials or verbal counseling to non-English speakers, Spanish speakers picking up their prescriptions may be one dose away from disaster.

Even pharmacies that do translate prescriptions may be providing faulty information. Commonly used computer programs that translate prescription labels had an overall error rate of 50 percent, according to a study of the software programs used by Bronx pharmacies released in 2010.

Researchers are using fotonovelas, small graphic novels that focus on medical issues, to convey health issues prevalent among Latinos. Here's a few pages of one of the books.

Thousands of young men in Nicaragua are dying of a disease that usually strikes the old: chronic kidney disease.

Some phrases simply were not translated, according to researchers. Those include descriptions such as “dropperfuls,â€

Originally Posted by pattyk

why wont these delete? sorry.

Sorry! I tried to delete this news artical; however, its too late.
Jean will have to delet it or a Mod.