Summary Of Overcoming Language Barriers To Health Care By Jane Perkins

In the article “Overcoming Language Barriers to Health Care,” by Jane Perkins she discusses how the issue of America’s melting pot of languages affects the ability to provide adequate medical care to patients (Perkins 1999). She points out the fact that everyday around the country there are citizens or immigrants coming in for care and are either not treated properly or misdiagnosed. These issues come from the fact that there is little to no staff in some of these hospitals that speak the foreign language or if they do the person is not on call twenty- four seven (Perkins 1999). Often times when there is no translator available the staff seeks someone in the hospital, whether friend or other patients, who speak English to help with translation.