Southwestern Medical Dictionary: Spanish-English, English-Spanish » (2ND)

Margarita Artschwager Kay is the editor of Anthropology of Human Birth and is a professor emerita at the University of Arizona. As Fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the American Academy of Nursing, Kay has focused her research on the health of Mexican American women throughout their lifespan.

As doctors time becomes more limited, communication with patients becomes more important and the need for doctor-patient understanding becomes critical. Here is a book that helps bridge the gap between the professional language of health care providers and that of people whose first language is Spanish.

A staple of southwestern health care for more than twenty years, this dictionary can make a difference in patient care. Now available in a revised edition, it focuses on vocabulary used in health contexts by Spanish-speaking people in order to help patients tell their stories and medical practitioners to understand them. Unlike other bilingual dictionaries that emphasize scientific terms, this one focuses on standard Spanish terms as well as regional expressions peculiar to Mexican Spanish language encountered in Chicago as easily as in Phoenix.

This book is an indispensable reference for all health care professionals who see patients of Mexican origin. Combining idiomatic precision with technical accuracy, it can help break down language barriers on either side of the border.

Booknews

In this reference for clinicians, nurse and anthropologist Artschwager (emerita, U. of Arizona) presents translations into English and Spanish of both professional and lay words relating to medicine. In addition to a simple definition, each entry includes an example of the word used in a sentence, with translation. Words for food items and kinship terms are found in the appendices, along with a table of the names of poisonous plants and illustrations of the human body. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)