Student request results in course in medical Spanish

¿Donde le duele? Where does it hurt? Wake Forest fourth-years get language lessons to help prepare them to treat a burgeoning Hispanic population.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. June 24, 2002.

Students at Wake Forest University School of Medicine may be among the first required to take Spanish as part of their training. The class of 2002 took a five-week course after Match Day, at their own request.

"This year everybody thought Spanish was relevant," said Venita Morell, MD, associate professor at the Winston-Salem, N.C., medical school and director of the Phase V curriculum, a series of courses and projects done after Match Day to help students prepare for their residencies.

"With North Carolina having a growing Spanish population, one of the things they wanted was Spanish," she said. "Students are required to attend 90% of their classes in Phase V, so this started off as a student idea and became a requirement because of the way the curriculum is set up."

Other schools may offer students individual electives -- like a month of pulmonary training -- during the period after Match Day and before graduation, or they may throw a blow-out party, then leave them alone as they get ready to leave campus and graduate.

Wake Forest, which has been reshaping its curriculum in recent years, brings its students back together as a class during this last month and offers them lectures in their specialty subjects, service projects in the community and journal clubs where they review current publications. [...]