A lot of the families I’ve worked with in community pharmacy are juggling two languages at once, and not always comfortably. The parent has spent a lifetime thinking, worrying and making decisions in Urdu or Hindi. The paperwork, the pharmacy labels and, often, the GP consultation itself happen in English. Somewhere in that gap, things get lost — not because anyone is careless, but because translating a medical conversation on the fly, in real time, is genuinely hard to do well.

What usually happens at the moment of translation

Very often it’s a son or daughter doing the translating, standing in for a professional interpreter because it’s faster, or because nobody thought to book one, or because Mum or Dad would rather have family in the room anyway. I understand that instinct completely. But translating on the spot, mid-appointment, means a child is doing two jobs at once: listening for their own understanding, and simultaneously converting clinical language into a second language, live, under time pressure. Nuance gets smoothed over. Side effects get summarised rather than described. Questions your parent might have asked in their own language, in their own words, sometimes just don’t get asked at all.

What gets lost isn’t always obvious

It’s rarely a dramatic misunderstanding. It’s smaller than that: a warning about taking a tablet with food that becomes a vague “don’t forget to eat,” or a question about a side effect that gets quietly dropped because it felt awkward to raise through a translator. Over months and years, a parent can end up taking eight or ten medicines without ever having had a single conversation, in their own language, about what each one is actually for. That’s not a failure on the family’s part. It’s what happens when a health system runs in one language and a person’s inner life runs in another.

Why a direct conversation changes things

When I sit down with a family member and we can talk about their tablets directly, in Urdu or Hindi, without anyone standing in the middle translating, something shifts. People ask the question they’ve been holding back. They describe a side effect properly, in their own words, instead of the flattened version that survives translation. They tell me things almost in passing, a home remedy they’re also taking, a tablet a relative overseas sent over, that might never have come up through a third party. None of that is about the family doing anything wrong beforehand. It’s simply what becomes possible when the clinical conversation happens in the language someone actually thinks in.

The goal isn’t just accurate translation of what’s already being said. It’s a conversation your parent can have properly, in their own language, about their own medicines — asking the questions they’d actually ask, in the way they’d actually ask them.

What this looks like in practice

The visit itself doesn’t look very different from any other Home Medicines Review — an unhurried 45 to 60 minutes at your family member’s kitchen table, going through every box, blister pack and bottle they actually use. What changes is the language it happens in. I ask about how a tablet makes them feel, whether they’ve noticed any side effects, and whether they understand why each medicine was started, in whichever of English, Urdu or Hindi feels most natural to answer in. Some families are entirely English-speaking and this makes no difference at all. Others switch between all three languages within the same sentence, and that’s completely fine too — the point isn’t which language we use, it’s that your parent never has to reach for a language that isn’t theirs to talk about their own health.

Afterwards, I write the clinical report to your family member’s GP in the way any report is written, clearly and in appropriate medical terms, because that’s the document their doctor needs to make a decision. The conversation that produced it, though, happened in the language your parent thinks in, which is often the difference between a review that technically covers everything and one that actually surfaces what’s been quietly bothering them for months.

How this fits into a Home Medicines Review

A Home Medicines Review is arranged through your family member’s GP and funded by the Australian Government’s Community Pharmacy Programs, at no cost to your family.² Difficulty with language, literacy or cultural factors is specifically recognised as one of the situations a comprehensive medication review is designed to help with.¹ In practice, that means the visit itself, not just a summary afterwards, happens in whichever of English, Urdu or Hindi your family member is most comfortable in. You’re welcome to sit in and translate for your own understanding if you’d like, but you’re not required to carry the conversation.

I go through every medicine your family member takes, prescription and over-the-counter, in their home, at their pace, and write a clear report back to their GP afterwards, who decides what, if anything, should change.³ If a hospital stay is what prompted the conversation, our article on the riskiest weeks after a hospital stay covers what’s worth checking first, and our guide on how to organise a review for your parent walks through raising it with their GP. I’m based in Craigieburn and cover Melbourne’s north daily, with the wider metro by arrangement, so a review in your parent’s own language is available at home, not just through a translated pamphlet.

Not sure what to do next?

Tell me what’s going on with your family member’s medicines — I’ll call you back, usually the same day, and we’ll work out the next step together. No cost, no obligation.

Request a review

References

Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, HMR and RMMR Fact Sheet for Medical Specialists: psa.org.au
Pharmacy Programs Administrator, Home Medicines Review: ppaonline.com.au
Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Home Medicines Review: health.gov.au