Familiarize yourself with Spanish grammar and common vocabulary. Doctors do not just speak with their patients about medicine. Conversational Spanish is essential to taking histories and establishing rapport with your patients. It can be helpful to enroll in a Spanish course. You can take a class at a nearby university, buy language-learning software, or enroll in an online course. There are free online courses, such as the lessons on the free portion of StudySpanish.com. These lessons can be tempting, but they do not provide the feedback and speaking practice that classroom courses do. Consider taking a classroom course while using the free courses as aids in your study and review.
Speak with native Spanish speakers. Speaking practice is the only way to become comfortable with a language. Listen to native speakers and try to imitate their pronunciation of Spanish words. Remember that they will be willing to help you by correcting your grammar and teaching you words that you may not know.
Review what you have learned and add to your vocabulary. Even after you feel comfortable with your Spanish skills, browsing through free online courses can bring your attention to phrases that may be useful but that you would not have anticipated needing to know. Continually expand your knowledge of the language.
Keep track of phrases that you use in your medical practice, and add them to your vocabulary. Write down words that you want to use but do not know how to translate. Even when you are speaking English, think about how you would explain the same information in Spanish. This can help you anticipate which words you will need. Keep a list of these words. Purchase a Spanish-English dictionary that contains medical terms, and look up the words on your list. Commit the words to memory, and try to use them so that you will remember them.
Ask bilingual people for help with difficult phrases. Many words are laced with nuances of meaning that can be difficult for dictionary entries to convey. If you have bilingual friends who are knowledgeable about medicine, ask them to explain phrases to you. You can also ask for help from native speakers in online language forums.
Enroll in a medical Spanish course. If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of vocabulary to learn, a medical Spanish course can help you to break it down into manageable lessons. Some of these are available online. MedicalSpanish.com, for example, offers courses tailored to specific jobs and fields within health care, and these courses even include some conversational Spanish. They also offer free e-mail lessons for a general medical audience. As with general Spanish courses, looking at free online medical Spanish courses can help you identify words that you need to know but that you may not have thought of.
Keep track of words that you need to learn. Never stop keeping your word list, and add both medical and general words to it.
Expand your study to include the culture. Read Spanish books and newspapers. Listen to music in Spanish and watch Spanish television shows. This will not only greatly improve your comprehension skills, it will also build common ground between you and your patients.
Practice. Using your language skills is the only way to keep and improve them. Even when you are not interacting with patients, practice speaking Spanish with native speakers, and ask them to correct any mistakes that you make.