Do Medical Schools help you be fluent in a foreign language?

[Macromind101]

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By the time I become a physician/surgeon, I really want to be fluent in the Spanish language (I'm already fluent in English and Korean but a third language would be really helpful as well) so that I can communicate with Hispanic patients and be really helpful in the clinic that I'm working at. I took Latin in high school (big mistake, lol, no one speaks a dead language) and I decided to go to the Spanish track in college. I got SUPER lucky on the Spanish placement test and managed to place into second-year/third-semester Spanish. Since my university has a four-semester foreign language requirement (not counting the classes you tested out of) and since I plan on taking both semesters of second-year Spanish in the summer, I decided to get a minor degree in Spanish while I'm at it (heck, you can get a Spanish minor at my high school by taking both AP Spanish Language & Literature). The required courses for the Spanish minor at my university are the first four semester of Spanish, a semester of general intermediate Spanish, a semester of Spanish grammar, a semester of Spanish conversation and a semester of Spanish literature. I am hoping to be at least decent at Spanish by the time I graduate from undergrad school but I'm pretty sure that I will be far from fluent, let alone being able to speak with Spanish-speaking patients. So here's my question:

In medical school, do they have classes for students who wish to continue their studies in Spanish? I'm hoping that medical school gives students who have prior knowledge in Spanish an opportunity to learn how to be fluent so that it can be useful in the medical field (like speaking with Hispanic patients, per say). If they do, then to what extent do the medical school Spanish classes teach you that will help you be fluent?

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

A few schools offer an elective in M1-M2 year in medical spanish; this is largely limited to teaching the medically related vocabulary to students who already have at least some proficiency. These are usually very lightweight courses (1 credit hr at my school) and would not help you achieve "fluency" if you aren't already.

 

[Barcu]

Schools may offer electives or let you take ugrad classes if you are next to a ugrad school.

However, if you have a good background in Spanish, the best thing to do is to go to a school/hospital that sees a lot of Spanish-speaking patients. That is where you will really learn. My school gets some, but not many, so my Spanish skills have actually decreased since starting med school. I'm not extremely pleased.

 

[Smurfette]

For the most part, in med school, you will have to independently help yourself improve your Spanish in your spare time; do not expect your med school to have classes on this (most don't), or for your schedule to necessarily allow for you to easily take UG or Grad level Spanish classes simultaneously.

Moving to PreAllo.

 

[QofQuimica]

Agree with the others. You can probably find opportunities to improve your Spanish while you're in med school if you look for them, but ultimately you're going to medical school to learn medicine, not to learn Spanish. Focus on learning the medicine.