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Language Barriers In Implementing Transitions Of Care

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Each day about one hundred million people visit the hospital either for checks ups, surgeries, or illnesses. Some of these patients usually stay for a couple nights and are discharged afterwards. Once they are discharged from the hospital they might have to take some new medications for the medical problem or have a follow-up checkup from their primary doctors to see how they are doing. To help move from a hospital setting to community setting, there is the Transition of Care program to help ease the transition. The purpose of the program is to increase the quality of care, and to reduce readmissions to hospitals and therefore saving healthcare expenses. One of the ways to reduce the amount of readmissions is to have the pharmacist call the …show more content…

Some of the obstacles that can occur are people who do not pick up their phones, or have language barriers. One of the main cause for patients being confused is the inability to comprehend what the doctors or pharmacists are telling them what medications to take. This can be resolved if there are translators available to help communicate with the patients. It will not do any good if this language barrier is not taken seriously and ignored. If translators can be implemented to be part of the program, the quality of care can increase as the patients do not have to worry about going to pharmacies or doctors with the language barriers. The key to a quality care with the patients is communication. If it can be improved, then the patients can work together with doctors and reduce the readmissions. I had no idea that the Transition of Care existed to help patient’s transition to different environments. This program can definitely help ease a patient’s transition. When my grandfather was in the hospital and was discharged, there was no contact whatsoever. There were no follow-up call about the new medications and he was confused which medications to continue to take. It was like once he was discharged, they did not care what he did afterwards unless he gets readmitted and the cycle continues. However, if they had implemented the Transition of Care program, he would probably feel the doctors truly care about his well-being and would appreciate any clarifications about the medicine he has to take. Doctors and pharmacists cannot assume that the patients know everything that they know. It is better safe than sorry if the patients know already which medications to take. It will just be a review of what medications they have to take. I hope that this program will continue to expand and be reinforced and implemented to every hospital to save some costs

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