Improving Patient Satisfaction in the Hispanic American Community

Abstract

Hispanic Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, with an ever-growing gap in the communicative capacity between patients and healthcare providers. This leads to linguistic marginalization and worse healthcare outcomes. There is an increasing need for Spanish literacy in healthcare professionals, including medical students. However, approximately half of medical schools don't offer a Spanish elective. We performed a scoping review of the literature to assess the relationship between medical Spanish electives, verbal fluency, auditory comprehension, and student comfort. This study was conducted using PubMed and Google Scholar to evaluate articles on Spanish electives in medical schools. Nine articles met inclusion criteria. Almost all studies demonstrated benefit as per outcome measures assessed with statistical significance. The available literature supports the need for Spanish elective courses, with numerous advantages conferred, e.g. increased self-perceived knowledge about specific health issues in the Hispanic American community and reduction in inadvertent communication errors in the patientprovider-interpreter interaction. However, most of the reports analyzed exhibited numerous limitations that warrant future research studies in order to eliminate variables such as bias and issues with generalizability. The authors suggest that more medical schools offer virtual Spanish electives with a focus on empathetic language strategies and patient satisfaction.

A Case Study of the Impact of Language Concordance on Patient Care, Satisfaction, and Comfort with Sharing Sensitive Information During Medical Care

“…Something as small as having the opportunity to take a Spanish elective course in a medical school can be beneficial in raising patient satisfaction within the Hispanic patient population. In turn, this can lead to increased patient-physician interactions with an overall rise in the quality of care [ 16 ]. Many medical schools offer medical Spanish education to teach patient-physician communication skills.…”

Strategies to Increase the Spanish-Speaking Workforce in Orthopaedic Surgery within the United States

“…The Hispanic/Latinx population in the U.S. has a projected growth of 273% between 2000 and 2050 [9][10][11] . However, even as the Hispanic/Latinx population continues to grow, only 5.8% of active physicians identify as Hispanic 12 .…”

“…However, even as the Hispanic/Latinx population continues to grow, only 5.8% of active physicians identify as Hispanic 12 . Additionally, only 6% of physicians overall identify as bilingual, and many Spanish-speaking patients have limited proficiency in the English language 9,13,14 . Within orthopaedic surgery specifically, only 3.3% of practicing surgeons and 7.0 % of residents identify as Hispanic/Latinx 15,16 .…”