Keeping patient records in Arabic, Kurdish and English

When two directions meet in one line

Arabic, Sorani Kurdish and Persian are written right to left; English is written left to right. When both appear in one line, such as a Latin drug name inside an Arabic sentence, a bracket or full stop can jump to a place the writer never intended and change the meaning.

The simplest rule is to keep a sentence in one language where you can, and to write a drug or test name in its Latin form without translating it. If you must mix, keep the Latin part short and put it at the end of the sentence.

One name, several scripts

A patient's name may be written in Arabic on the identity card, in English on the passport, and pronounced in Kurdish by the family. Even within one script there are variants: the hamza, the letters for y and k, and the closed and open forms of t are written differently in Arabic, Kurdish and Persian, and a single name can be spelt several ways in Latin letters.

To make it easy to find a file again, agree one rule in the clinic: the name as it appears on the official document. When searching, do not type the full name; type a short part of it, and try the other spelling if nothing comes up.

• Record the full name as on the identity document; do not shorten it.
• Add the father's or grandfather's name when a first name is shared with other patients.
• Use the file number for calls and billing, because it does not change with the script.

Latin digits, Gregorian dates and Baghdad time

Eastern Arabic digits and Latin digits (0 to 9) are both used in the region, and a few digits look different in Arabic and Persian. A phone number or a dose is easy to misread when it is copied from paper to screen, or from one staff member to another.

DrOnlineIQ therefore uses Latin digits, the Gregorian calendar and Baghdad time in all four languages, so a phone number and an appointment look the same to someone reading in Arabic, Kurdish, Persian or English. Times are stored on one clock, so a patient's appointment does not differ from one screen to the next.

Prescriptions and labels read by the pharmacist

Many pharmacists are used to reading drug names and doses in Latin letters, and the packs themselves are in English. It is clearer to write the drug name, its strength and how often it is taken in English with Latin digits, and to write the instructions for the patient in the patient's own language.

That way the pharmacist finds what they need without guessing, and the patient understands how to take the medicine. Check a printed prescription at least once before handing it over, because mixed directions are what most often goes wrong in print.

A shared family phone, no phone, and interface language

In many families one number is recorded for several people, usually a parent's. That is acceptable, but a phone number is not an identity, so do not rely on it alone to pick the patient. In DrOnlineIQ a patient's file lists other patients of the same clinic who have the same number, so a shared family is easy to notice; sharing a number gives nobody the right to open another person's file.

If a patient has no phone, leave the field empty and do not type a made-up number, since a made-up number can reach a stranger and tie two records together. The file still exists, identified by its file number, the patient's name and date of birth.

Interface language belongs to each user: reception can work in Arabic, the doctor in English and the accountant in Kurdish, each seeing the same information in their own language. What the patient sees in messages and appointments follows the language suited to the patient.