Language barriers can create challenges for healthcare professionals, caregivers and patients alike, and can decrease the quality of healthcare delivery and patient safety.
Knowing the appropriate terms and translations for body parts, symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments, as well as general medical language can help improve practitioner-patient encounters by ensuring clarity and effective communication.
Below are a list of resources in English and Chinese that contain common medical terms, terms for arthritis and osteoporosis, body parts, and more.
These resources can be used by clinicians when meeting with Chinese speaking patients, as well as Chinese patients and caregivers when speaking with health care providers.
Resources
Click the title of each resource to be directed to the document or website.
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Chinese-English Common Dementia Terms: Document with a list of common dementia terms including organs and structures, signs and symptoms, and treatment and medication.
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Chinese-English Regularly Used Medical Terms for Body Parts and Organs: Document with a list of body parts and organs.
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Medical Vocabulary A (Traditional Chinese): Document with medical vocabulary.
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Medical Vocabulary B (Traditional Chinese): Document with more medical vocabulary.
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Medical terminology (Simplified Chinese): Document with additional medical vocabulary.
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Commonly used medical vocabulary in Chinese and English (Traditional Chinese): Document with medical vocabulary related to infectious diseases and vaccines, chronic diseases, women’s health, men’s health, nutrition and mental health.
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Chinese-English Phrasebook for Medical Encounters: Document with common medical terms and phrases used during a physician-patient encounter.
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Medical Interview Questions: Document with common medical questions asked during a doctor’s visit.
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Booklet of Medical Terms (Traditional Chinese): Document with more common medical terms and phrases used during a physician-patient encounter.
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Chinese-English medical vocabulary: Arthritis and Osteoporosis: Document with medical vocabulary related to arthritis and osteoporosis.
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Chinese-English Phrase Workbook: Website for healthcare providers, patients, and/or caregivers to learn medical Mandarin.