Teaching foundational language equity concepts in the pre-clinical curriculum

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Equity
• Linguistic Diversity

Background:

• Existing medical training inadequately addresses communication with linguistically diverse patient populations.
• Current curricula often relegate language-appropriate communication skills to electives or focus narrowly on medical interpreting.
• There is a need for comprehensive integration of language equity concepts in medical education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate an intervention aimed at teaching foundational language equity concepts to pre-clinical medical students.
• To understand medical students' existing language proficiency and clinical experiences with non-English speaking patients.
• To assess the impact of a newly developed language equity curriculum on student knowledge, attitudes, and future practices.

Main Methods:

• A pre-clinical language equity course was implemented across three medical school campuses.
• The curriculum covered the impact of language on health, physician language proficiency, and working with medical interpreters.
• Student language skills and experiences were self-reported; pre- and post-questionnaires assessed knowledge, attitudes, and intent to apply concepts, with statistical analysis of trends.

Main Results:

• A significant majority of students (75%) reported speaking non-English languages, and over half had prior experience caring for such patients.
• Most students (28%) had served as untrained, ad hoc interpreters, with very few (1%) formally assessed for medical language abilities.
• Post-course, students showed significant improvements in language equity knowledge, interpreter use strategies, and intent to assess their language skills (p < .001).

Conclusions:

• A longitudinal language equity curriculum can be effectively integrated into pre-clinical medical education.
• The intervention successfully highlighted student linguistic diversity and provided a foundation for language equity prior to clinical rotations.
• Future research should evaluate the long-term impact on interpreter utilization, clinical performance, and institutional multilingualism.