Why Learning Another Language Could Make You a Better Doctor

If you've spent any time in a medical setting, you may have already seen the effects of a language barrier between healthcare providers and patients. While phone translator services are revolutionizing practitioners' ability to communicate with anyone who walks in the door, there is always a sense of uncertainty throughout the conversation. For a patient in a critical medical moment, having a doctor who can speak some of their language increases the trust between patient and provider. For any aspiring physician who wants to build a connection with each of their patients, learning another language can be a meaningful and concrete way to reach more people than ever. 

Unless you already have a language in mind, deciding which one to pursue can be a challenge. If you mainly want to learn a new language for medical purposes, the best thing to do is research language demographics in the area you plan to practice. Find out what the most frequently spoken languages in your area are, and start from there. If you have a foreign language you're particularly passionate about, it's always worth learning, even if not many people in your area speak it. Passion can drive much of the time you commit to language learning, so take advantage of your personal interest.

The biggest challenge to learning a new language is the amount of time and effort it can take to become fluent. While fluency would be ideal, in this era of phone translation, absolute fluency need not be your goal. Being able to speak conversationally will put your patient at ease, make them smile, and help them feel like they can trust you with their health.

Conversational fluency takes intense effort, but it doesn't have to take very long. To quickly build conversational fluency in your target language, you want to cultivate what are called your "language islands." These are sentences you commonly say every day about various topics. Dictate your own life out loud to yourself via a speech-to-text app, then translate those sentences and practice saying them out loud repeatedly. It's especially useful if you can have a text-to-speech app say them out loud, and then you 'shadow' them, or repeat the sentence after hearing it. 

Once you've got a few language islands memorized, start practicing using them through active recall. Talk to yourself in your target language throughout your day. Journaling can also help with this process. If you have any friends who are native speakers, try to speak with them. The most important thing is not to be embarrassed about mistakes, since that's just how you learn!

If you would like to take your fluency to a level where you can completely converse with your patients without the use of a phone translator, it would likely be best to enroll in a medical terminology course in your target language, as many clinical terms are not used in everyday conversations.

Learning a language is not easy, but it is very rewarding. When you learn a language, you open up a whole new part of the world. Over summer break, consider putting together your language islands and setting sail to a new horizon of communication.

Thank you for reading,

Ashby Glover