Medical Language Program

Instructors, students and tutors of the ME518 Spanish Language Intensive course at the class fiesta.
Instructors, students and tutors of the ME518 Spanish Language Intensive course at the class fiesta.

 

Harvard Medical School provides medical language training to support students as they pursue clinical training, research, and service opportunities in different cultural contexts in Boston and abroad. 

The goals of the Medical Language Program are to equip medical students with language skills to provide language-concordant and culturally-humble care with diverse patient populations and to promote awareness of language barriers in achieving health equity.

 

Courses

HMS students: Contact ose@hms.harvard.edu for detailed information on course enrollment and schedules.

Longitudinal Medical Language Courses

HMS faculty members offer intermediate-level medical language courses to 1st and 3rd year students. Classes are held weekly during one or two semesters, either during the fall semester or during both fall and spring semesters. Course content focuses on the consolidation of oral language skills in the clinical encounter and cultural sensitivity when working with patients who speak these languages.

  • Intermediate Medical French (LN709), fall
  • Intermediate Medical Mandarin (LN701), fall and spring
  • Intermediate Medical Portuguese (LN703), fall
  • Intermediate Medical Spanish (LN705), fall and spring
  • Advanced Medical Spanish (LN707), fall and spring

If you are not at the intermediate level of the languages listed above, you can visit this list of Language Learning Resources to improve your skills. 

Students have the opportunity to pursue clinical clerkships in countries where these languages are spoken.  

Intensive Medical Spanish (ME518M.41A)

This 4-credit course is designed for beginner and intermediate Spanish-speaking 3rd or 4th year medical students.  It is offered as a full-time, 4-week elective course in September and October. Instructors from Latin America teach the course and students interact with native speakers through one-on-one conversations daily. The intensive class model is offers the fastest and most efficient way to improve the oral medical Spanish skills of students. By the end of the course, students can conduct a basic medical examination in Spanish.

For students who wish to participate in a Spanish-language clinical training experience in Latin America, ME518M.41 is offered each month. Students may take one or two months for credit. Prior Spanish fluency or completion of ME518M.41A is required for these clinical rotations. See the list of Clinical Elective Exchange Programs for current rotation sites.

Students interested in these courses should contact the Office of Scholarly Engagement for more information. 

History of the Medical Language Program

Founder of Medical Spanish at HMS: Dr. Guillermo Herrera

Dr. Herrera teaching a Medical Spanish class.
Dr. Herrera teaching a Medical Spanish class. Image: Nicte Mejia, MD

 

Since the early 1970s, Harvard Medical School has offered Medical Spanish courses and accompanying clinical rotations in Latin America for credit, originally designed by HMS and HSPH faculty member, Manuel Guillermo Herrera, MD. For some 45 years, Dr. Herrera directed the medical Spanish education of hundreds of HMS medical students until he retired in 2017.

Born in Guatemala in 1932, Manuel Guillermo Herrera traveled to the US to improve his English at the age of 16. He later enrolled at Harvard College and obtained a degree in biochemistry followed by a medical degree in 1957 from Harvard Medical School. Afterward, he travelled the world as the physician for the New York Philharmonic which was under the direction of Leonard Bernstein. Dr. Herrera would then spend the rest of his career as an internal medicine physician with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The Brigham and Women’s Hospital Hippocrates Society honored Dr. Herrera with their Humanitarian Award in 2017. In 2017, he was honored for 60 years of service to the Brigham.

In 1971, Dr. Herrera founded a primary care Spanish Clinic at the Brigham that operated until 2017. Oftentimes, students from the Medical Spanish courses would volunteer in the clinic to assist the patients and also to maintain their Spanish-speaking skills and build their clinical skills. Dr. Herrera was also a faculty member at the Harvard School of Public Health where he pursued research on nutrition and the effects of micro-nutrients in a variety of countries over many years. Dr. Herrera passed away on January 19, 2022 from cancer.

ReVista Harvard Review of Latin America Fall 2000 issue: Dr. Manuel Guillermo Herrera Acena: Changing the Face of Health Care for Latinos/as” by Susie Seefelt Lesieutre

Boston Business Journal Aug 16, 2013, Updated Sep 18, 2013, 8:52am EDT: “Champions in Health Care: Dr. Manuel Guillermo Herrera-Acena - Bridging the health care gap” by Mary K. Pratt, Special to the Journal. Dr. Manuel Guillermo Herrera-Acena: Brigham and Women’s longest serving acting physician advocates for a Latino community as health care needs, policies grow more complicated.  

 

Dr. Herrera teaching a Medical Spanish class where students are sitting in a classroom.
Dr. Herrera teaching a Medical Spanish class. Image: Gretchen Ertl


Dr. Guillermo Herrera (in front, brown suit) pictured with Medical Spanish instructors from Costa Rica and Boston based instructors and HMS students
Dr. Herrera (in front, brown suit) pictured with Medical Spanish instructors from Costa Rica, Boston-based instructors and HMS students. Image: Nicte Mejia, MD

Program Timeline

1972

Dr. Guillermo Herrera initiates the first medical Spanish language course (later formalized into ME518M.41a).
The courses have had over 600 participants in the past nearly 50 years.

2003

Office of Scholarly Engagement establishes clerkship exchanges with medical schools and centers in South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Students participate in these electives abroad to further their clinical training and put their language learning into practice.

2008

HMS students establish the Harvard Medical Language Initiative (HMLI).
Existing non-credit classes in medical Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin were included in HMLI.

2011

Credit-bearing, longitudinal courses are established in medical Spanish, Mandarin, and Portuguese.
Over 500 students have participated in longitudinal courses since their inception.

2017

The faculty-led Medical Language Program is established in the Office for Scholarly Engagement.
Dr. Rose Molina is the inaugural Medical Language Program Director.