Global Surgery & Anesthesia

Hi Juan, this is exactly the point that I brought up during a seminar on patient safety research last week. All participants agreed that local language materials are not easily available - getting guidelines in Spanish may be difficult, but (trust me) getting them in Urdu is impossible. I think this is where local societies and institutions have an important role in identifying and adapting guidelines for their own use, and then translating them into the local language(s). In Pakistan, all medical and nursing literature available is in English, but the language of communication among staff and patients is Urdu - there are serious concerns about miscommunication due to language barriers. Has anyone else experienced similar problems?