Teaching foundational language equity concepts in the pre-clinical curriculum.

Background: Despite the prevalence of non-English languages in the US population, existing medical training to teach communication with linguistically diverse communities is limited to electives or solely focuses on medical interpreting. Language-appropriate communication skills are seldom comprehensively integrated in medical education. This study describes the development and evaluation of an intervention to teach foundational language equity concepts.

Current State and Proposal of Best Practices of Standardized Patients for Spanish-Language Objective Structured Clinical Encounters in US Medical Schools.

Introduction: Medical Spanish programs commonly engage Spanish-speaking standardized patients (SPs) for communication skills assessment, yet no studies address SP recruitment, selection, or training.

Methods: We sent questionnaires to medical Spanish faculty at 20 US medical schools to gauge their practices in recruiting and selecting Spanish-language SPs. We invited faculty to distribute a separate questionnaire to Spanish-language SPs to gather SP language abilities, training, and experience.

Validity Evidence for the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix as a Measure of Medical Spanish Proficiency.

Background: The lack of a standardized language assessment process for medical students and physicians communicating in a non-English language threatens healthcare quality and safety.

Objective: To evaluate the validity of a new rating tool, the Physician Oral Language Observation Matrix (POLOM)™, in assessing medical students' oral communication with Spanish-speaking standardized patients (SPs).

Design: POLOM scores were compared to measures of student medical Spanish proficiency to examine convergent validity and to measures of clinical performance to examine concurrent/criterion validity.

Development of a Tool to Assess Medical Oral Language Proficiency.

Purpose: To communicate with linguistically diverse patients, medical students and physicians often use their non-English-language skills. However, there is no standard protocol to determine whether those skills are adequate before patient care. This causes many physicians, institutions, educators, and learners to forgo non-English-language proficiency assessment altogether.

Bilingual diabetes workshop to improve Latinx care.

Background: Linguistic and cultural discordance between clinicians and patients contributes to suboptimal care of Latinx patients with diabetes. Bilingual pedagogies may help learners with pre-existing Spanish skills to improve health communication with linguistic minorities.

Approach: We designed a diabetes workshop for health professions students that applied the educational principles of bilingual pedagogies, focus on learners with prior Spanish skills, and intersectionality of language and culture.

Preoperative risk factors for postoperative cardiac arrest following primary total hip and knee arthroplasty: A large database study.

Background: Cardiac arrest (CA) has been identified as a potential complication following Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) and Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA). This retrospective, case-controlled study aims to identify risk factors in order to improve the management of patients undergoing THA or TKA with known preoperative comorbidities.

Methods: CPT codes were used to investigate the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) database for patients who underwent THA or TKA from 2010 to 2017.