Local doctors, nurses learn Spanish to better serve growing Hispanic population

It’s all about connecting and community.

A group of Akron Children’s Hospital employees is more easily communicating with the Spanish-speaking families they serve these days, thanks to Dr. Parizad Dejbord-Sawan. The associate professor in UA’s Department of Modern Languages led the group through a three-semester, 9-credit certificate program that covers medical terminology, general conversation and culture.

Her UA students gave her the idea.

“I had a group of students in my classes that weren’t Spanish majors and minors,” explains Dejbord-Sawan. “They were students from the health professions. They were future doctors and nurses that realized they would need to be able to communicate with the Hispanic population they were going to serve.”

If her students recognized the need, Dejbord-Sawan reasoned, how was it being met in local hospitals, beyond translator services? She created a market needs survey to find out.

Building trust and relationships

Akron Children’s Hospital, which serves a large and growing Hispanic population, responded quickly, recognizing that employees who could converse in Spanish would help build trust and relationships with young patients and their parents who might otherwise feel intimidated.

Dejbord-Sawan created the customized course material she presented to her Akron Children’s Hospital students. Her first group — composed of doctors, nurses, administrators and others — graduated in fall 2015 and a new cohort of 20 employees began classes in the fall as well.

“Being able to greet patients and converse with them in their native language to foster a culturally and linguistically appropriate health environment for these patients goes a long way to making them feel at ease in a medical setting,” notes Dejbord-Sawan, who was born in Spain. “I see this course as contributing to a higher quality health care system.” 

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• Modern Languages at UA: Department page | Degrees offered
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Dr. Parizad Dejbord-Sawan