How Medical Spanish & Latinx Patient Knowledge Supports Healthcare Students & Professionals
Learning medical terminology in Spanish will help YOU serve OTHERS to ensure their health and safety. Multilingualism is becoming increasingly recognized as vital within healthcare and fields requiring professionals to understand medical needs of hispanic populations.
Learning medical terminology in Spanish will help you serve others to ensure their health and safety. Multilingualism is becoming increasingly recognized as vital within healthcare and fields requiring professionals to understand medical needs of hispanic populations.
This program on the Latinx Patient: Spanish and Culture for Healthcare will provide participants with necessary cultural and language skills. These skills will make them more impactful in the field of medicine and healthcare in the future, as well as the means to become more invaluable to your peers and your organization.
Continue reading to learn more about how this program can play an integral role in your future medical-related career and contributions to improving health care for all people, particularly the Latinx community, in the United States.
MULTILINGUALISM IN HEALTHCARE
The World Health Organization has a page on their website that is dedicated to the importance of Multilingualism, and reads: “Multilingual communication bridges gaps and fosters understanding between people. It allows WHO to more effectively guide public health practices, reach out to international audiences, and achieve better health outcomes worldwide. In this way, multilingual communication is an essential tool for improving global health.” (World Health Organization)
The WHO is dedicated to pursuing a continuous Multilingual Action Plan to make materials and information more accessible to people who need them around the world. EdOdyssey echoes this vital global need for multilingual healthcare and resources. Specifically in the U.S., there is a need for Spanish-speaking healthcare professionals capable of supporting the growing hispanic population.
In our Latinx Patient: Spanish and Culture for Healthcare program, you’ll increase your Spanish-speaking confidence and you’ll engage in conversations with Peruvian teachers and medical interpreters. One day, you too can work to support hispanic populations in the U.S., and work toward better health outcomes nation-wide.
MEDICAL SPANISH: A CAREER BOOST
This program is about both helping YOU become the best version of yourself, and positioning you to best serve OTHERS in the future. Below are three key ways in which the Latinx Patient: Spanish and Culture for Healthcare program will give you tangible career boosts for the future.
Stand Out Amongst Your Peers: Become a standout applicant for internships, jobs, or volunteer opportunities. The completion of this program and the earning of a certificate from El Sol Spanish Language School in Lima, Peru, will demonstrate to future employers that you took the effort to go beyond the required academic path, and that you can bring a unique and highly needed cultural competence to the workplace.
Prepare Now For the Future: As you learn medical terminology now, you will gain knowledge that you can use through your healthcare career. You will not have to cram additional language learning on top of rigorous medical school or health professions schooling in the future. Plan ahead and work smarter, not harder.
Wider Range of Job Opportunities: You will be able to serve a larger range of people. Linguistic and cultural competency will likely expand the range of your potential future job opportunities. Some communities, particularly those with high Spanish-speaking immigrant populations, will be specifically looking for bilingual physicians and healthcare professionals.
BEING A BETTER PATIENT ADVOCATE
When you have a more advanced medical Spanish vocabulary and cultural understanding, you will enhance your ability to serve the growing latino population in the United States. You will be well positioned to help people feel understood and cared for while receiving high quality healthcare. Additionally, you will avoid miscommunications with native Spanish speakers.
Beyond solely the language component, your newly gained context of common illnesses and trends among hispanic and immigrant patients will help you better serve and advocate for patients. As you gain more cultural and linguistic knowledge, your background will serve as a crucial step to bridging communication gaps between patients and healthcare professionals.
Your knowledge learned through Medical Spanish will put you in a better position to play a more impactful role in the outcome of someone’s medical care.
FEELING OF FULFILLMENT
When your skills learned during this course are put to the test with actual patients, an immense sense of fulfillment will likely follow. By putting in the upfront hard work to learn the vocabulary and cultural knowledge, you have positioned yourself to best serve others who may otherwise lack proper care due to their lack of English language proficiency.
Doctors, nurses, administrators, volunteers, researchers, social workers, psychologists, and healthcare workers alike all can better care for their patients by helping them feel heard and understood. Throughout medical related fields, the rising need for practitioners and professionals who speak both English and Spanish will be accompanied by the need for these people to possess cultural knowledge, or direct experience, surrounding Latino communities.
The diverse U.S. population calls for a healthcare field which cares for and supports people of all backgrounds and English proficiencies. This course will position you not only for personal success within the healthcare field, but also to better serve vulnerable communities that need you most.
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Understanding Why Medical Spanish and Hispanic Cultural Knowledge Matters in Healthcare
The need for Spanish speaking professionals continues to rise, and students and professionals who want to prepare for the future of healthcare will require training that combines language, culture and best practices.
The need for Spanish speaking professionals continues to rise, and students and professionals who want to prepare for the future of healthcare will require training that combines language, culture and best practices. The Latinx Patient: Spanish and Culture for Healthcare program will be taught online by Peruvian professionals. They will fuse learning of critical Spanish vocabulary related to the medical field with cultural contextualization of Latin American immigrant populations in the U.S.
When you combine language learning with cultural modules, you develop a wider context that will help you continue developing into a more well rounded professional. If you are or want to become a physician, health care professional, social worker, and/or a professional prepared to best handle the needs of Spanish-speaking patients, this program is perfect for you.
Possessing knowledge surrounding Latin American and Latinx culture enables students to better interact with and support non-English speakers, particularly including immigrants and those of Latin American heritage. During the program, you’ll learn more about how medical care improves from a holistic understanding of the patient, and how YOU can be an integral part of such care.
LATINO POPULATION GROWTH IN THE U.S.
A key goal of The Latinx Patient: Spanish and Culture for Healthcare program is to provide students with the knowledge and preliminary resources to best serve patients or clients who are part of the growing Spanish-speaking population in the United States. While the annual growth of the Hispanic population in the US has slowed since 2015, “Latinos remain an important part of the nation’s overall demographic story”, making up about 18% of the total U.S. population, according to PEW research.
The knowledge you learn during this course will help you best serve, and work with, this diverse and growing population. From triage vocabulary to practice restating symptoms to ensure clarity of communication, to learning about common illnesses among hispanic patients, you will expand your knowledge in a breadth of directions.
NEEDS OF LATINX & IMMIGRANT PATIENTS
In a publication by UMASS Medical school about cross-cultural initiatives, it states that “in many situations, it is not just a language barrier that needs to be breached. Different cultures have different expectations and requirements when it comes to health care,” according to Migration Policy. Health care providers that have background knowledge of different cultures and customs, in addition to Spanish fluency, will best be able to cross common barriers between patient and provider.
Imperative to the administration of high quality health care is accurate communication and the creation of trust between healthcare professionals and patients. Patients need to feel understood and that their values and identity are valued. Spanish speaking patients may struggle getting their needs, pain, and overall message across to those caring for them, resulting in potentially dangerous miscommunications.
BEST PRACTICES FOR IMMIGRANT AND SPANISH-SPEAKING PATIENTS
Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants and refugees, live unique realities which result in specific challenges. Some immigrants may not know the extent of their rights or how the U.S. healthcare system functions.
Healthcare professionals need to be aware of these specific needs and challenges in order to best care for these populations. Some key knowledge of Latin American culture and medicine can play an important role in understanding and caring for patients with such backgrounds.
Medical practitioners and professionals working in healthcare-related fields must enable their patients to understand all aspects of their care, treatment, etc., so that they can make well informed decisions regarding their health care. Professionals interacting with hispanic populations in health-related circumstances also face language and cultural barriers that can be obstacles which prevent people from being able to make informed decisions for themselves.
CULTURAL COMPETENCY IN HEALTHCARE
Within UMASS Medical School’s same publication, they argue that “in our diverse world, ensuring that people with limited English competency or specific cultural requirements have access to quality health care is an obligation for all health care providers,” according to Migration Policy. The EdOdyssey Medical Spanish course will help you help the healthcare field move toward providing quality health care for all.
Feeling understood by a doctor or other healthcare provider who speaks Spanish and has relevant knowledge of Latin American culture, will likely result in the patient or client feeling comfortable and trusting doctors and professionals to do their job.
WHY MEDICAL SPANISH?
This program will enable students to learn from and with other excited students, as well as native Spanish speakers with experience in the medical field. Luis Garcia, a LSA Qualified Medical Interpreter, and EdOdyssey’s study abroad cultural advisor in Lima, Peru, will guide students through the cultural module of the program.
Combined with language learning through El Sol Spanish Language School, based in Lima, Peru, the cultural course will help students gain a broader cultural understanding of how one’s culture, background, beliefs, and language affect the healthcare that they receive or need.
Upon completion of the course, we hope that students feel inspired to continue serving others, particularly those who may face great challenges due to a lack of English-proficiency. More generally, this course aims to inspire students to work toward bettering themselves and the healthcare field through Spanish language acquisition and cultural competency.