Language Barrier in Nursing Education and Training in Pakistan

Abstract

In Pakistan, it has been commonly seen that nurses and midwives whose first language is not Urdu (National language of Pakistan) or students of midwifery and nursing who are not familiar with the English language face several barriers in their education and clinical practice period. This becomes a foremost untapped issue because the majority of the nurses and midwives produced in Pakistan are either not properly certified, skilled or trained clinically. Neighbour, developing countries like Bangladesh, India and Afghanistan are aggressively working on education and training of community nurses; they have developed several programs to deal with language barriers in their population.