ArticleCureus2024
Effectiveness of an Online Medical Spanish Course in Improving Medical Students' Spanish Proficiency.
Article in Cureus, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Developing a one-shot medical Spanish module for medical students: an open educational resource approach.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Language Proficiency Improvements After Longitudinal and Intensive Medical Spanish Courses.Cureus · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionA growing need exists for language-concordant healthcare for Spanish speakers in the United States. More than three-quarters of American medical schools provide Spanish language instruction, but little data exists on best practices. The purpose of this retrospective study was to examine whether an online medical Spanish course is effective at improving medical students' Spanish proficiency. MATERIALS AND
methodsThe course involved one-on-one instruction and group mini-conferences conducted by teachers based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Teachers evaluated students before and after the course using a 21-point scale adapted from the Cervantes Institute's Diplomas of Spanish as a Foreign Language (DELE) scale. We used descriptive statistics and Wilcoxon's signed rank test and conducted a thematic analysis.
resultsEighty students participated. The mean (range) and median levels on the pre-course assessment were 3.8 (1-13) and 3, respectively; the post-course levels were 8.0 (3-16) and 7 (p < 0.001). Thirty-five students (43.8%) completed course evaluations. Twenty-five (71.4%) rated the course as excellent, eight (22.9%) as very good, and two (5.7%) as good.
conclusionLanguage instruction in medical Spanish conducted online by native speakers abroad is effective and well-received by medical students. Future studies should examine whether students maintain their gains in proficiency over the long term.
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