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Linguistic Factors in Arabic for Miscommunication of Medication Names

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submitted on 2024-03-13, 06:41 and posted on 2024-03-13, 06:41 authored by Taqi F. Hashmi


A commentary and analysis on the miscommunication of medication names between native Arabic-speaking patients and pharmacists with a native English-speaking family physician using Medical English as a Lingua Franca (MELF), in a healthcare context. An important cause of communication difficulties is the different way native English and native Arabic speakers linguistically process medication names when using MELF. This is likely to be explained by the differences in the native grammars of English and Arabic which determine differences in pronunciation and predict potential error prone groupings of letters and sounds. This in turn leads to repeating linguistic errors such as epenthesis (insertion of additional vowels between consonants) and metathesis (the swapping of adjacent consonants). The article highlights a case where both epenthesis and metathesis occur simultaneously leading to a potential serious adverse event through a medication error and suggests further avenues of research to minimise such errors.


Other Information

Published in: Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.2147/jmdh.s229115

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

History

Language

  • English

Publisher

Dove Medical Press

Publication Year

  • 2020

License statement

This Item is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Institution affiliated with

  • Primary Health Care Corporation

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    Primary Health Care Corporation

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