Graduate Spanish certificate offered for healthcare professionals

ShaRhonda Watkins studied Spanish in high school and college, but she always longed to be fluent in the language. The clinical pharmacist at USA Health now is on her way to reaching that goal with the help of a graduate certificate program made available to current and future healthcare professionals at the University of South Alabama.

Watkins is finishing her third semester of the online program.

“Every two weeks, we get a different module dealing with various organ systems,” said Watkins, who also serves as the PGY-1 pharmacy residency program director. “We learn the Spanish terms for that particular part of the body, have weekly grammar lessons, participate in weekly discussion groups with our classmates, and read articles on the incidence-related disease states.”

Watkins said she and her classmates practice with a language coach once a week by Zoom. “I’ve learned so much from this class. I’ve learned how to prepare learning material and give PowerPoint presentations in Spanish,” she said. “I’ve also learned the proper way to speak to Spanish-speaking patients to be more culturally competent and sensitive to their needs.”

Zoya Khan, Ph.D., associate professor of Spanish and director of USA’s Spanish for Healthcare Professionals, said there are not enough U.S. healthcare providers with speaking proficiency and cultural knowledge to meet the needs of the Spanish-speaking population, which is expected to make up one-fourth of the population in the nation by 2045.

“This certificate is designed to equip our healthcare providers with the requisite language proficiency and cultural competency to communicate with Spanish-speaking patients,” Khan said. “Improved communication with this large patient demographic should enable healthcare practitioners to be even more effective in treating their Spanish-speaking patients.”

Registration for fall is open, and the semester begins August 17. Spots are limited. Applicants must have an undergraduate degree to enroll in the program.

Three of the program’s courses are offered fully online, and the fourth is a practicum, which can be fulfilled either through an internship option that allows students to work with a healthcare facility serving a predominantly Spanish-speaking population in the United States or in any part of the Spanish-speaking world or through a remote simulation practicum offered through the USA simulation lab.

The program includes four courses:

GIS 511: Introductory Spanish for Healthcare Professionals: 3 credit hours

GIS 512: Intermediate Spanish for Healthcare Professionals: 3 credit hours

GIS 512: Advanced Spanish for Healthcare Professionals: 3 credit hours

GIS 514: Practicum Spanish for Healthcare Professionals: 3 credit hours

For more information, email zkhan@southalabama.edu or call 251-460-6291.