Back to Journals » Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare » Volume 13
Linguistic Factors in Arabic for Miscommunication of Medication Names
Authors Hashmi TF
Received 29 August 2019
Accepted for publication 21 January 2020
Published 13 February 2020 Volume 2020:13 Pages 175—178
DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/JMDH.S229115
Checked for plagiarism Yes
Review by Single anonymous peer review
Peer reviewer comments 2
Editor who approved publication: Dr Scott Fraser
Taqi F Hashmi
Family Physician, Primary Health Care Corporation, Doha, Qatar
Correspondence: Taqi F Hashmi
Family Physician, Primary Health Care Corporation, PO Box 26555, Doha, Qatar
Email [email protected]
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: medication errors, Arabic, metathesis, epenthesis, Medical English as a Lingua Franca, MELF
Corrigendum for this paper has been published
This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.
By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.