Study finds gaps in language support for medication instructions

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.