Student acceptance of clinical conversational Spanish in medical curriculum

There is little in the literature on the impact of student acceptance of receiving medical training under a different language other than English. In order to address a steady growing minority population, this requires a shift in the delivery of training. Training in Spanish can also serve as an ad hoc to cultural competency, language concordance, and health literacy for that particular population. The State of Texas population projects that Hispanics will likely surpass the Anglos by 2020; therefore, the need to train the future healthcare workforce in Spanish should be considered. In response to this, the author designed a course where students build on their exiting Spanish proficiency by acquiring medical terminology relevant to a Full Medical History and practice staged patient-encounter videos. The present manuscript provides a description of the online course and secondly, it describes the findings of student acceptance of the course. This course may provide a resource and basis to future curricula seeking to train students not only interested in mastering Spanish communication during clinical encounters, but also indirectly improves language concordance, cultural competency, and health literacy for Spanish-speaking patients.