Communicating with Latino patients

This article describes the efforts of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing to develop the Spanish language and cultural competency skills of advanced practice nursing students by establishing an elective course, Communicating with the Latino Patient. The need for this training is reflected in the literature, which has shown that language barriers decrease patient satisfaction and quality of care and increase the likelihood of medical error. Fifty-seven first-year master's students participated in this course. The effectiveness of the training was monitored during and after each course by self-assessment surveys of the participants' language acquisition. The data suggest that the most successful outcomes result from limiting class size, emphasizing high interactivity, and incorporating clinical experiences in the instruction, as well as focusing exclusively on intermediate-level speakers when resources are limited. Training can be time consuming and costly, yet graduates agreed that the training was imperative and valuable.