Widgit Patient Communication Sheet, uses symbols to help patients in hospital to communicate with healthcare workers, UK, 2021

A hospital stay is a time when communication is vitally important. However, there can be many factors which affect someone’s ability to communicate. This communication sheet uses Widgit’s large and well-established library of symbols to help healthcare workers and patients communicate with each other.

The sheet has symbols to illustrate major requests and replies that might be needed during a hospital stay such as responses to the question ‘what type of pain is it?’ ranging from sharp to numb. There is also a pain scale, a body chart, and generic responses like yes, no and repeat.

Over the past 25 years, Widgit have developed a library of over 11,000 symbols which can be used to represent over 40,000 words. These symbols are used in lots of different settings from schools to tourist attractions to hospitals. As a company they believe that everybody should have free and equal access to information.