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RxLingua — Test of Adequacy of Foreign Language Linguistic Competency for Pharmacy Employees
The Need for Pharmacy-Specific Oral Proficiency Test
More and more pharmacies serve the needs of customers with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in their daily operations. Having on staff employees who speak the language of their customers can go a long way towards ensuring that the customers needs are met and that drug safety information has been adequately communicated.
But how can a pharmacy know if the level of foreign language proficiency of an employee is adequate? Many of the first- or second-generation pharmacists speak a foreign language at home and, on the surface, exhibit great fluency in the language. However, they sometimes:
- Do not know or have any experience discussing technical subjects in the foreign language, such as drug regiments and drug safety concerns of cardiac or cancer patients; nor do they have the words to explain complex drug administration procedures (e.g. parenteral).
- Know only the health and pharmacy-related vocabulary of the specific sub-culture of their parents, but may misunderstand and incorrectly explain patient education topics to native speakers of the assessed language who come from a different country. For example, a pharmacist who only knows Mexican Spanish may unknowingly give incorrect directions to a speaker of Puerto Rican, Colombian or Argentinean Spanish because they use the same terms for different things.
Some pharmacists, who learned a foreign language in school or college may not speak very fluently, have a marked accent in that language or may not have the fluency discussing cultural or political subjects. Contrastingly, they may well have thorough knowledge of the technical vocabulary of pharmacy, and can competently relay that information to LEP patients.
Therefore, it is essential that the test of linguistic competency measure the mission-critical aspect of that competency — the ability of the pharmacy employee to communicate the type of information they would need to communicate in pharmacy setting to actual patients.
The Objectives and Focus of the Test
The RxLingua Test is designed to focus on assessing the types of discourse commonly used by pharmacy employees when communicating with customers. Within the field, the assessment is broad enough to cover most major areas of drug safety information and patient education, and it can help identify any major blind spots where the candidate needs additional study before the pharmacy can rely on him or her to communicate precisely and safely with its customers.
Test Methodology and Procedure
The RxLingua assessment gauges the functional competence of pharmacy employees to adequately communicate the necessary information about the safe and effective use of prescription medications to pharmacy customers with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in typical pharmacy scenarios. The candidate needs to demonstrate that, in a broad range of common pharmacist-patient communication and counseling scenarios, he or she has adequate command of the following skills in the tested language:
- Oral Comprehension
- Speaking Proficiency, and
- Knowledge of Pharmacy Terminology
The RXLingua Test is administered via a telephone interview lasting 20-25 minutes. It has to be sponsored by a certified pharmacy located in the United States.
Languages Tested
Currently, the RxLingua assessment is available in the following languages:
Arabic
Cambodian (Khmer)
Chinese
French
Haitian Creole
Hindi
Hmong
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Tagalog
Urdu
Vietnamese
Other languages are being developed, so please check with RxTran if you have other requirements.
Certification of Competency in Pharmacy Patient Communication in Foreign Language
Successful candidates are awarded the Certificate of Competency in Pharmacy Patient Communication in the assessed language. The certificate is valid for 5 years.
How to Learn More about RxTran Pharmacy Language Solutions
To get more information about our pharmacy language services, call Evan (617-621-0940 x. 141 or 800-240-0246) or email at info@RxTran.com to find out how RxTran can help you provide a more comprehensive set of services to your pharmacy clients.
