Collaboration and evaluation in medical Spanish teaching [Innovation and digital technologies in Languages for Specific Purposes]

As the demand for healthcare workers fluent in foreign languages continues to grow, so does the necessity for successful educational programs that produce providers with the appropriate language skills and cultural humility to serve the target population. Given the interdisciplinary nature of teaching languages for specific purposes, we propose a model of collaboration between experts in the different fields involved to train well-rounded professionals. In the particular case of languages for healthcare, professionals in both the medical and language learning fields should combine their expertise to offer students a well-integrated training that builds on their medical education at the same time that it provides them with meaningful opportunities to practice and develop their language and culture skills. While this paper focuses on Spanish, the main points discussed in it can be applied to teaching any language in the healthcare setting.