best way to learn medical spanish?

[mhdousa]

Hey all,

My residency will be in a very heavy spanish-speaking area. I currently
speak no spanish. Anyone have any thoughts on the best way to learn
some medical spanish in two months -- particular books or tapes?

Thanks!

-M

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[KUB]

MUSHDOA:
Welcome back after a long absence. My advice to you is spend the rest of your vacation somewhere on the beach in Mexico, and find yourself a little spanish-speaking hostess to teach you the language...
Take care
K-

 

[DR]

Seriously, that is probably the best way to do it! Go away for vacation, and avoid going to a tourist area. Go somewhere safe, but where English is not spoken much. Trying to survive in a place where you don't know the language provides the best learning curve for a foreign language. The other way is to hire some hot private tutor and go for a Spanish "immersion" course. 😀

 

[sweetfynesse]

actually, i am doing a Spanish Immersion course in Merida, Mexico right now. Unless you specify that you want to learn medical spanish, then most of your classes will focus around everyday life. in addition, i would suggest going to a school or program that specializes in medical spanish. the school i am at now, doesn`t specialize in medical spanish, and they have a very hard time trying to teach it. luckily for me, i only came here to learn some Spanish, and not medical spanish, oh yeah and for vacation.

most of my friends that ended up practicing in highly Spanish-speaking areas, mainly learned as they went along. don`t worry so much that you don`t know the medical Spanish now, it will come with time, and with practice. it doesn`t matter what book you read. if you don`t have Spanish-speaking patients or teachers to work with you, you will not be about to pick up their accents, anyway...but, if you want suggestions on books, just go to amazon.com and search under medical spanish...there should be plenty of recommendations there...

good luck with residency. i am sure you will do well...

 

[margaritaboy]

One of the best ways to learn Spanish with a medical emphasis is to work in a hospital/medical clinic in a Spanish speaking country. If you schduel allows, you may wish to do a one month away rotation in a place like Mexico or Ecuador.

I lived in Quito for 4 months and ran into a number of American medical students there. Quito was a good location because of the abundence of cheap Spanish schools there. I paid about $6/hour for one-to-one instruction. Of course, Quito is a little 3rd world-y, and not an acceptable travel destination for some folks.

The key, however, is that no matter where you go or what you do....Don't hang out with other English speakers! The best way to learn a language is to be forced to use day in and day out for an extended time.

 

[mhdousa]

okay, while i appreciate the idea of going to a spanish speaking country for a month, there's only 2 months before residency starts...not a whole lot of time
to set up and go on a trip to Central or South America.
Does anyone have any suggestions of books or tapes with which they have personal experience?
Thanks.
-M

 

[LaCirujana]

Since you won't have the opportunity to go for an immersion course somewhere (really the best way to learn), try Manual for (Relatively) Painless Medical Spanish . It's simple, straight-forward and will give you some decent basics. You really will pick up a lot on the job, though--I went to med school in an area where you had to speak Spanish to survive OB. I already spoke Spanish, but most of my friends were able to pick up enough on their rotation to make it through. Good luck.

 

[docmartin]

It's very difficult to find MEDICAL Spanish tapes/CDs. My suggestion is by the Barron's Book/CD's for learning Spanish (my SO used those). Also, listen to a local Spanish radio station in your car all the time to see how much you can pick up. And try to find someone to talk to who is fluent and all you should speak is Spanish to them (try like 1 day per week for 1 hour). It will be frustrating at first, but that is the only way to learn w/o complete emersion.

There were some people from my school last summer who went to Costa Rica for a month and it was Medical Spanish only. They lived w/ a host family during that time. Not sure on the logistics, I would do a search on Google for the company...Good luck 🙂

FYI-The Hispanic population are very gracious about even speaking a little Spanish and appreciate the effort.

 

[Tazmaniac]

I learned tons of spanish from my patients:
1. Become terribly humble
2. In your most quizzical voice, say "como se dice" and point to whatever you want to know how to say.
3. Ask them to repeat it.
4. Then repeat it yourself.

This worked great with body parts (except Ob/Gyn and urology - highly recommend drawing those instead of pointing), medical equipment, diseases and conditions, etc. Verbs you can either draw or perform. I used to do Review of Systems by performance: itching, burning, abd pain, seizures, etc. Eventually they volunteered the spanish word and I no longer had to writhe uncontrollably to convey "epilepsy."

The rest you can pick up with Manual for Relatively Painless Medical Spanish, which has a few errors, but is very user-friendly.

-Todd USC MSIII-->MSIV

 

[mhdousa]

great -- thanks so much for all the tips!!
Good luck to all.

-M

 

[Sheerstress]

mhdousa:

At this point, it's probably just for future reference, but if you ever get the time, here are some immersion Spanish schools in Mexico that sometimes allow you to combine formal lessons with vacationing. From what I've heard, the most expensive part of the whole thing is the airfare.

http://www.becari.com.mx/

http://www.instculturaloax.com.mx/

http://www.vinigulaza.com/

 

[hemoccult]

Another fantastic way you could learn the Spanish language would be to:
1-defer residency for a few years
2-join the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
3-go on a 2 year mission and hope it is Spanish speaking
4-then begin residency.

Otherwise, the aforementioned suggestions of immersion is honestly the best way to do it. I just thought I could add some humor to the thread.

Also, I am in no way mocking the Mormon Church as the above recipe is how I learned the great beauty of the Spanish language I often use.

Best of Luck in your quest for Spanish. Don't get too worried and put some effort into it and the language will eventually come to you. Additionally, if your area is heavily hispanic, all the better influence to benefit your learning.

Adios y buena suerte!

 

[fiatslug]

Something that's working well for me is making my own tapes from an excellent Spanish book (Spanish for Healthcare Professionals). I'm basically reading the whole book into tape recorder, and listening to it on the way to & from the hospital! Going through the book like this has really helped me--I can basically get through a general exam now, though I'm by no means conversational. (It helps to have a decent intuitive knowledge of pronounciation... I'm a California native...)

 

[Enkindu]

This program looks interesting:

Salud (medical spanish)

 

[JasonDO]

Originally posted by mhdousa
Hey all,

My residency will be in a very heavy spanish-speaking area. I currently
speak no spanish. Anyone have any thoughts on the best way to learn
some medical spanish in two months -- particular books or tapes?

Thanks!

-M

volunteer in a walk in medical clinic in an underserved area with a predominate spanish speaking population....you will learn spanish very quickly...comprende?

 

[Funshine0123]

I have two books which have been highly recommended to me by a few professors, doctors, and even some interpreters. I won't pretend that they are the byall and end-all of knowing medical Spanish, but they are helpful.

1. Say it in Spanish: A Guide for Health Care Professionals by Esperanza Villanueva Joyce and Maria Elena Villanueva

2. Essential Spanish for Healthcare by Dr. Miguel Bedolla

That said, I also agree that humbling yourself and letting your patients TEACH you can help so much. I've studied Spanish (it was even my undergrad major) and working in a hospital while completing my postbacc program, even terms that I had known and forgotten, I will NOW never forget b/c I had to ask my patients to teach them to me.

Hope this helps.

 

[md03]

Actually, It's not necessarily too late to go to a spanish course. I've just finished making arrangements to do 2 weeks of intensive (20 hr per week) spanish. It's not a medical spanish course, but since I know about 5 words of spanish, a beginner course seems very appropirate. I will combine that with some time on the beach..... and I will be able to start my residency with a broader vocabulary than "Dolor aqui?" I have no illusions that 40 hours will make me fluent, but it will be better than trying to learn from scratch by tapes, and will give me a foundation that I can build on with other methods (such as tapes and asking patients)

In addition to the programs cited above, there are many, many more, available in most spanish speaking countries. A quick search on the net should give anyone a number of choices.

Just kind of depends on the timing of your graduation and start date of residency, if you can work out the timing might be worth doing.

 

[Xclusiv]

Hello, I wanted to resurrect this thread after 12 years to see if any new advice is out there.
What worked for you?

 

[Perrotfish]

Hello, I wanted to resurrect this thread after 12 years to see if any new advice is out there.
What worked for you?

Spanish Immersion. I went from pretty much nothing to pretty close to fluent over the course of 4 months with this company: www.ecela.com. There are many similar companies in other countries as well.

 

[Crayola227]

I think it's key to learn some basic Spanish before learning medical Spanish

There are things you can google online to find resources for Spanish medical interview, but if you don't learn basic sentence structure and verb conjugation you will have a VERY hard time understanding the answers they will give you to your questions

Before doing immersion, find something online to read or an intro to Spanish course, be sure you've got a basic understanding at least in principle, you will learn more in the country if you get that much on your own

One thing mentioned that is wrong above is about Quito. Ecuador is now one of the best Latin American countries to learn Spanish. It's come a long way from 12 years ago. The Spanish spoken there is considered some of the most clear and enunciated, much closer to what you would learn in school and phonetic (that will not be the majority of what you hear in the States but when first learning Spanish it is helpful to start easy). Due to better economic conditions it is more stable, tourist friendly, and a more modern state, Quito especially, but that has raised prices, but still fairly cheap compared to US at least. Definitely not cheapest in South America but if you want a safe, easy to travel in, cheap place to learn Spanish, I recommend it. Still plenty of language schools there. As far as tourism, if you ever wanted to go to Galapagos Islands, you must fly through Ecuador that is the country that owns them. You can visit the Amazon jungle, one of the few places where you can swim in the water and no risk of schistomaniasis, but still mosquitoes and risk of yellow fever. Quito itself is so high you don't have to worry about any mosquito borne diseases or bug spray!! Ecuador is also home to coast, amazing seafood, and Peru is close by for Machi Piccu etc. All by cheap bus. The weather is much nicer than Central America. People like to go to Costa Rica and Panama for language as they are big on tourism and financially and economically stable (so safer and easier to get around if your skills aren't up to it). I agree you want to avoid tourist areas but you also want to be safe and be in areas that gringos can navigate while acquiring skills.

Asidd from inmersion (there are online programs to go to Ecuador or elsewhere, and medical Spanish programs can be found) other excellent ideas are tuning in to Spanish television, watching movies originally in Spanish (part of learning language is context and lip reading), radio.

Meetup website has opportunities for getting involved in a Spanish language club.

Attaining conversational level Spanish will make it so so much easier to pick up medical vocab than just piecemeal route memorization.

Obviously other systems like Rosetta Stone or audiobooks or whatever is good too.

 

[Crayola227]

And if you go homestay is best! The hostel scene you can avoid speaking Spanish entirely so not exactly helpful if you want skills.

 

[Xclusiv]

Excellent input from you both. Thank you!