"My patient set down his knitting sticks, leaned over, and said in Spanish: "Wow. This went by fast." I thought he meant the movie we were watching. Ciro Guerra's "El abrazo de la serpiente." "What do you mean?" I asked, answering in Spanish. "La vida," he said. "Pasó volando." He was a patient I met as a volunteer back in college. Our conversations unfolded because I could meet him in his own language."
"In college, a medical Spanish course at Yale transformed how I understood patient care. We practiced explaining conditions and conducting clinical conversations entirely in Spanish. We studied health reporting from across Latin America and worked through practice cases involving linguistic barriers to care. The class pushed my perspective beyond English and an America-centric system, giving me the foundation for global health work and health equity research that ultimately inspired my interest in medicine."
Speaking a patient's language converts clinical encounters into spaces for personal stories, enabling emotional connection and deeper understanding beyond diagnoses. Conversations in Spanish revealed family history, hobbies, and intimate memories, fostering patient trust. Practical medical Spanish training taught condition explanations and full clinical conversations, exposed students to Latin American health reporting, and prepared learners to navigate linguistic barriers. Such training broadens perspective beyond an English-centric system and supports global health and health equity work. Centering an immigrant patient experience underscores that trust, not just information exchange, is the central currency of medicine.
Read at Business Insider
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