Medical Student and Faculty Attitudes Toward Translanguaging with Spanish-Speaking Patients

Abstract

Background: Spanish is the second most common US language, and Spanish speakers commonly translanguage—spontaneously integrate multiple languages. Medical language courses have proliferated, yet learner and faculty attitudes about translanguaging with patients remain unexplored. Also, it is unclear whether medical Spanish courses address real-world patient linguistic practices, such as translanguaging. Methods: We applied a community cultural wealth framework to identify translanguaging practices relevant to patient-physician communication: regionalisms, Spanglish, and non-standard language usage. From January 2020 to May 2021, we surveyed students (n=355) and faculty (n=14) in a standardized medical Spanish course at 14 sites on their attitudes toward translanguaging practices. Results: Regionalisms were the most widely accepted translanguaging practice by both students and faculty, and this opinion was reinforced by the course (94% pre vs. 95% post-course agreement; p=0.045). Student agreement with Spanglish was moderate and declined post-course (58% vs. 55%; p<0.001). Faculty were likelier than students to be accepting of non-standard language usage (57% faculty vs. 5% students; p<0.001). Conclusion: Medical students and faculty reported mixed attitudes about translanguaging practices in healthcare, and taking a medical Spanish course had variable effects on student responses. Future work should focus on developing and evaluating medical Spanish educational pedagogies that explicitly incorporate real-world patient perspectives and promote flexible language use that prioritizes mutual respect and understanding.