Prescribers face barriers and confusion to providing prescription medication instructions for patients
Pharmacies that receive federal funds must provide language support to make sure patients can understand their medication instructions. A survey of 169 outpatient prescribers at a large academic medical center found widespread uncertainty about how language support actually works. The researchers found:
- The majority of respondents (61.5%) reported a lack of awareness of best practices for providing non-English medication instructions to patients or pharmacies.
- Most (80.5%) did not know whether the pharmacy provided translated labels.
- Only 5.9% used the prescription’s free-text field to flag the need.
- More than one-fourth of prescribers (27.8%) were unsure whether the pharmacy received their communications about instruction translation.
- Few respondents (8.3%) informed patients that they could request non-English medication instructions from their pharmacy.
- Many prescribers (69.8%) doubted their patients got accurate written instructions.
- The obstacles named most often were time constraints (69.2%), lack of translation resources (62.7%), reaching interpreters between visits (51.5%) and inability to use a non-Latin alphabet (40.8%).
Why It Matters: These findings highlight the critical need to coordinate language services between institutions and among patients, prescribers, and pharmacy team members.
Prescriber Practices and Barriers to Providing Prescription Medication Instructions for Patients With a Non-English Language Preference
Corresponding Author: Beatriz Manzor, PharmD, BCPS, et al
University of Michigan College of Pharmacy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
