In response to the Greater Houston area's growing Hispanic population, the University of Houston-Sugar Land held the first session of a new cultural education course for nursing students last month. Beginning Medical Spanish is a two-week course for post-graduate nursing students to learn practical and basic Spanish to better treat patients not fluent in English.

"These are practical ways for them to connect with the population they will be treating," UH-Sugar Land spokesperson Marisa Ramirez said.

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In 2014 the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan statistical area, or MSA, ranked fourth in the nation for the size of its Hispanic population—about 2.34 million—according to Pew Research Center. Among the MSA's Hispanics, the largest groups were Mexicans at 75.7 percent, Salvadorans at 8.2 percent and Hondurans at 3.2 percent.

Led by María Pérez, an instructional assistant professor who teaches Spanish for the Global Professions program at UH, nine students took the inaugural class for two weeks at the university's Sugar Land campus. Dr. Rosalinda Morales, assistant clinical professor and a nurse practitioner, worked with Pérez to create the class as well.

Several of the students had taken Spanish classes before, but Pérez said it was not designed to be comprehensive.

We start slow with just vocabulary, and then we build it up," she said. "Just brainstorming for this course, I just had to think, 'What are the basics?'"

Pérez told her students to be aware of different slang terms or expressions among patients from different Spanish-speaking countries.

"It's never a direct translation because we do take into account cultural differences and the diversity of Spanish speakers," she said.

The course involves classroom instruction as well as a nutritional assessment and field trips to markets or other locations where students learn to interact with the public in Spanish, learn about the diets of Spanish speakers and what factors may be barriers to health care access.

Pérez said this can range from a lack of care due to immigration, a mistrust of health care professionals or employment in a job that does not provide benefits.

"You have a lot of other issues when you're looking at health disparity," she said. "Nurses look at the whole person. It's not just a medical diagnosis."