Improving Assessment and Learning Environments for Graduate Medical Trainees to Advance Healthcare Language Equity.

Language-appropriate care is critical for equitable, high-quality health care, but educational standards to assure graduate medical trainees are prepared to give such care are lacking. Detailed guidance for graduate medical education is provided by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education through the following: (1) an assessment framework for competencies, subcompetencies, and milestones for trainees and (2) the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) Pathways for assessment of trainees' learning environments. These tools do not include a robust framework to evaluate trainees' abilities to offer language-appropriate care.

Medical Student Perceptions of Sociocultural Issues in Healthcare: A Multisite Study of Medical Spanish Education.

Theory: Cultural competence and humility are core elements of medical education in a diverse society. Language is inseparable from culture, as language informs, indexes, frames, and encodes both culture and worldview. Spanish is the most common non-English language taught in U.

An Overview of Online Resources for Medical Spanish Education for Effective Communication with Spanish-Speaking Patients.

Phenomenon: Despite the rapid development of virtual medical Spanish educational materials, online resources lack transparency and a peer-review process. The purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to provide a critical inventory of virtual resources for medical Spanish education, thereby providing a panorama of the current state of online medical Spanish.

Approach: Research team members conducted iterative searches to identify medical Spanish online resources, which were then screened for predetermined inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Scoping Review of Textbooks for Medical Spanish Education.

Unlabelled: Despite medical Spanish program proliferation to teach clinicians the language skills to communicate effectively with Spanish-speaking patients, course material selection remains a challenge. We conducted a scoping review to systematically identify medical Spanish textbooks, evaluate utility, and identify gaps. On average, language reviewers scored books lower than medical reviewers.

Missed Opportunities to Build Rapport: A Pragmalinguistic Analysis of Interpreted Medical Conversations with Spanish-Speaking Patients.

Interpreted medical discourse presents significant challenges for communication because portions of the original message are often reduced, omitted, or revised, particularly by untrained interpreters. Linguistic devices that contribute to rapport and politeness may be perceived as unimportant or unnecessary and therefore are omitted. Thus, when messages are conveyed without interpretation of politeness and rapport attempts, pragmatic issues and misunderstandings occur.

Medical Spanish programs in the United States: a critical review of published studies and a proposal of best practices.

Background: Despite an increasing demand for medical Spanish training, there has never been a comprehensive review of the methodology and outcomes of existing programs.

Purpose: This article critically reviews studies published about medical Spanish education and proposes best practices for curriculum design and program research and evaluation.

Methods: The authors reviewed articles published on medical Spanish programs in the United States from 1977 to 2012, then appraised them for the presence of five factors commonly used in second-language acquisition (SLA) research.