when/how to learn languages?

[epsilonprodigy]

It's becoming more and more evident that one needs to speak at least Spanish in order to be maximally effective in my area. I'm also interested in working abroad in the long-term, but with boards-->rotations-->residency on the horizon, I'm not sure when I'd be able to get enough consistent practice.

As it stands, I can stumble along in Spanish for a bit, but not well enough to do anything other than chit chat. Anyone have luck learning a language well enough to be functional in it during this crazy journey? If so, how did you go about doing it efficiently?

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[Lavan]

The most important thing you can do is to try using it all the time with patients. Get a google translate app for your phone and look up the medical Spanish you need to tell patients things. Even spending a time in a foreign country won't teach you the vocabulary you need to speak about medicine.

When learning how to express things, don't worry as much about tense and whatnot. A few things you can do to cheat to make your speaking intelligible is constantly use certain constructions instead of trying to constantly conjugate a large list of verbs.

Estar + present participle (usted esta recibiendo medicina para dolor = you are receiving medicine for pain)
estar + past participle (la puerta esta cerrada = the door is closed)
haber + past participle (ha tenido comezon? = have you had itching?)
Use Ir + a + infinitive to describe future tense (Vas a sentir mejor = you are going to feel better).

Using the compound tenses can make your life a lot easier. You'll see that certain verbs and nouns are crucial for the majority of daily medical issues. Estar, ser, tener, sentir, querer, etc. The nouns for the various body parts, feelings, complaints, etc. By doing this youll know how to say most of the things you want to say. Understanding the answers can be more difficult, so it's okay to ask yes or no questions.

You can use Rosetta Stone or any number of medical spanish books, but the using it daily on the wards is the most important part. The 10,000 hour rule applies. Every time you use it and you think of a word or phrase you wished you knew how to say or a word your patient said you didn't understand, look it up.

 

[abolt18]

There's a pretty cool new iPhone app called canopy. Requires an access code but you can just request one. It has a lot of potential I believe! Access code it gave me to share was CanopyVIP. Basically it's full of common phrases specific to emergency medicine, im, surgery, or ob/gyn and has a bunch of languages including Spanish, Arabic, contact, hindi, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. Bring a 1st year I haven't gotten to use it, but I plan to four at least basic stuff if I need in the future. Also had a quick button to call an interpreter at your hospital (if it's in the system). Check it out.

 

[abolt18]

Also, best way to learn a language, and only way in my opinion, is full immersion. I lived in France for 2 years (age 19-21) and speak French fluently. Couldn't have ever done that with only classes.

 

[operaman]

I used to work overseas a good bit and always found the hardest part about any foreign language is readjusting the ear. Every language carries the important information in different parts of the words/sentences. For example, in English we often use pronouns to establish the subject, all words carry the important info on the accented syllable (the rest being pronounced simply as a schwa), and we usually arrange sentences as subject - predicate. When listening to English, we instinctively pick out what we need to hear to understand. In Spanish (and other romance languages), you rarely use subjective pronouns because the conjugation of the verb makes it redundant, words (especially verbs) carry important info on multiple syllables, and frequently you'll construct sentences where it almost feels like the predicate comes first.

So, that said, I always felt like there was a 5-7 day lag whenever I'd go overseas before my ears readjusted and were able to pick out the important stuff. Prior to this, it feels like all foreign speakers are speaking really fast when in fact they are speaking just as fast as we do. I eventually found that finding ways to listen to the language ahead of time really helped decrease this lag time to the point where I could step off the plane and feel pretty good. For Spanish, you could find some Spanish-language television shows, Spanish movies, etc. and just watch them for fun in your spare time and you'll find your ears adjusting. Watch the news in Spanish too as newscasters generally have very clear, intelligible speech in any language and you have a lot of context to understand what's being said.

 

[brebsedrets]

good,I lived in France for 2 years (age 19-21) and speak French fluently. Couldn't have ever done that with only classes.thanks

 

[neusu]

App, duolingo. You'll be speaking spanish in no time.

 

[abolt18]

good,I lived in France for 2 years (age 19-21) and speak French fluently. Couldn't have ever done that with only classes.thanks

I don't get it. Nothing showed up. Also, he asked how we did it? I was just making a point that immersion is the way to go. OP I'd recommend a medical mission trip or something that allows you to be surrounded by native Spanish speakers. If you have friends that speak Spanish, ask them to help you practice (like only speaking spanish to you). Good luck!

 

[joyfoyMD]

It's becoming more and more evident that one needs to speak at least Spanish in order to be maximally effective in my area. I'm also interested in working abroad in the long-term, but with boards-->rotations-->residency on the horizon, I'm not sure when I'd be able to get enough consistent practice.

As it stands, I can stumble along in Spanish for a bit, but not well enough to do anything other than chit chat. Anyone have luck learning a language well enough to be functional in it during this crazy journey? If so, how did you go about doing it efficiently?

There's also Canopy's medical Spanish online course. (www.canopyapps.com/spanish-monthly). The course is being used by a lot of medical schools, but if you schools isn't one of them, you can get a free trial and purchase it yourself.

Also, they make Canopy Medical Translator, which is an app to help clinicians communicate with patients in many languages, not just spanish. You can download it here, use access code 6444
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/canopy-medical-translator/id792808936

 

[Pisiform]

doesn’t hospital provide translators?

 

[swoopyswoop]

yea, please don't struggle through a conversation in your paltry spanish as you learn, with a patient. get the hospital translator on the line.

 

[Keona]

Many patients appreciate you making the effort, even if it's only I'm going to work on getting the interpreter on the phone. However, later on in life working in a private practice you may not have the same easy access the hospital has. It's nice if you can talk to the patient some and figure out what's going on before you have to start paying for the phone time.

 

[FutureInternist]

I know the hospital translators have to go through a pretty intensive screening process. I looked at my primary language's course & was pretty sucky at it

Anyone know of the legal ramifications of someone communicating with a patient in not their (the doc's) primary language

I would think this would cause a lot of miscommunication & potential lawsuits

 

[swoopyswoop]

I dunno the legal ramifications but it's unethical to use your subpar foreign language skills when a skilled, trained interpreter is available via phone.

 

[Perrotfish]

I dunno the legal ramifications but it's unethical to use your subpar foreign language skills when a skilled, trained interpreter is available via phone.

If you are lucky enough to work in a hospital where 95% of the patients speak English you always use a translator phone service whenever someone needs one. The hospital will be happy to pay for the service rather than have you stumble through the interview in a language you half understand.

However as soon as more than 10% of the hospital starts speaking Spanish, suddenly there is no translator service available. Its not financially practical and, in my experience, the hospital's response is to just not provide the service in any way accessibly to residents or students and to let you deal with the consequences. Don't get me wrong, the translation services do exist, otherwise how could they blame you for not calling a translator when you miss it an important piece of the history? However they're so inconvenient that you will be waiting for an hour to obtain services for one patient, while you will be held responsible for rounding on up to a dozen Spanish language only patients in the 90 minutes before morning report. At one 500 bed, 50% Spanish speaking hospital I worked at there were couldn't have been more than 6 translators for the entire hospital. The did 'Spanish rounds' with attendings continuously for most of their 8 hour shift and were essentially unavailable for anything other than consents and discharge planning. Another hospital used a translator phone service... which was accessed by calling a guy who had to walk the phone up to you to make sure the call was 'accounted for'. Only in EDs have I seen residents with consistent, convenient access to translation services.

In my experience resident who don't know any Spanish in those hospitals frequently end up with an even worse option than taking a history in beginner Spanish. Maybe you wait 30 minutes for the nurse whose grandmother spoke only Spanish so she kind of speaks a few words, and you leave a hour later than everyone else because you need to wait for that nurse multiple times a day. Maybe you translate through the patient's 7 year old child. Maybe you (and I have seen this often) rely on those kinds of translators for H&Ps and discharges and simply leave the subjective section entirely blank for inpatients. All your options will suck.

BTW I recommend these guys: www.ecela.com. A vacation month + an elective month gets you 8 weeks of training. That should get you up to speed.

 

[FutureInternist]

If you are lucky enough to work in a hospital where 95% of the patients speak English you always use a translator phone service whenever someone needs one. The hospital will be happy to pay for the service rather than have you stumble through the interview in a language you half understand.

However as soon as more than 10% of the hospital starts speaking Spanish, suddenly there is no translator service available. Its not financially practical and, in my experience, the hospital's response is to just not provide the service in any way accessibly to residents or students and to let you deal with the consequences. Don't get me wrong, the translation services do exist, otherwise how could they blame you for not calling a translator when you miss it an important piece of the history? However they're so inconvenient that you will be waiting for an hour to obtain services for one patient, while you will be held responsible for rounding on up to a dozen Spanish language only patients in the 90 minutes before morning report. At one 500 bed, 50% Spanish speaking hospital I worked at there were couldn't have been more than 6 translators for the entire hospital. The did 'Spanish rounds' with attendings continuously for most of their 8 hour shift and were essentially unavailable for anything other than consents and discharge planning. Another hospital used a translator phone service... which was accessed by calling a guy who had to walk the phone up to you to make sure the call was 'accounted for'. Only in EDs have I seen residents with consistent, convenient access to translation services.

In my experience resident who don't know any Spanish in those hospitals frequently end up with an even worse option than taking a history in beginner Spanish. Maybe you wait 30 minutes for the nurse whose grandmother spoke only Spanish so she kind of speaks a few words, and you leave a hour later than everyone else because you need to wait for that nurse multiple times a day. Maybe you translate through the patient's 7 year old child. Maybe you (and I have seen this often) rely on those kinds of translators for H&Ps and discharges and simply leave the subjective section entirely blank for inpatients. All your options will suck.

BTW I recommend these guys: www.ecela.com. A vacation month + an elective month gets you 8 weeks of training. That should get you up to speed.

This stuff should be reported during the ACGME survey