Monday, September 12, 2022

Medicine in Spanish: 22-23 session kick-off

6:00 PM

Taubman Health Sciences Library
Room 6230

Designed by and for UMMS students, Medicine in Spanish helps future physicians practice and apply their language skills in the clinical setting. Learn more at an upcoming informational meeting ahead of the 2022-23 session.

The 2020 US census estimated the number of Latinx residents in the country at more than 62 million, up from about 50 million a decade earlier. The demographic shift is driving many medical schools to incorporate medical Spanish programming into their curricula. One recent survey of US medical schools found that 78% of institutions offer some form of medical Spanish programming.

A student-driven effort that began in 2018, the UMMS Medicine in Spanish program is funded and supported by Global REACH. Monthly instructor-led sessions are supplemented by weekly small-group gatherings as participants apply their conversational Spanish-language skills to aspects of medicine: taking patient histories, hearing and interpreting various health complaints, conducting common types of examinations, and so on. Social and cultural considerations impacting the Hispanic community are also discussed.

The course culminates in Spanish-language standardized patient interviews, role-playing clinical scenarios with actors portraying patients reporting common illnesses or symptoms. Learn more at the upcoming meeting.