Customer Reviews

Essential Spanish for Healthcare : A Quick, Easy-To-Use Program for : Nurses, Doctors, Clinic and Hospital Administrators, Ems Personnel and Home Healthcare Workers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are at least three books on the market for health care workers who wish to learn enough spanish to help their Latino patients. I have all three and think that this is the best one. The others have many dialogues and phrases that are simply unrealistic and would never need to be known by a nurse or a doctor. You end up wasting your time learning phrases that you will never use. This book (be sure to get the cassettes also as they have all of the essential phrases so you can practice your pronunciation) has words and phrases which mirror reality. This is information you can really use. It is amazing how much you can pick up with just a few hours of study. Well worth the price!

The book, casette, and pocket guide, as a set provide above basic Spanish language available to study and use at work. I have had 2 years of spanish at the college level, this book is advanced enough to be helpful. The pocket guide is portable, and you can quickly look up the area of the body the person is having trouble with. Unfortunately, it cannot keep stressed out parents and children from speaking so rapidly or excitedly to always catch what they are communicating back. If you know some spanish, this set helps as a crutch to get through an initial assessment.

The book was disapointing. Material is not organized by the level of difficulty. Very simple sentences and phrases are placed next to gramaticly advanced ones.
"Grammar notes" provide a few very basic grammar rules and are inadequate for the level of gramatical dificulty of many sentences.
The majority of the patient interview questions and recomended phrases are either irrelevant or simply inappropriate.
Buy this book if you want to learn the names of the body parts in Spanish, but do not expect much else of it.

I cannot honestly imagine any beginner learning medical Spanish from this book (I'm well aware I could be wrong). However, I recommend it heartily for professionals who have studied general and/or medical Spanish, but don't speak the language fluently, as it makes a very good reference tool for expanding your medical vocabulary in specialized areas. Because the topics are grouped and contextually expressed as questions and basic likely answers, it is more useful than a simple dictionary. I would agree with the reviewer who said the phrases are a mixture of highly complex (and formal) structures with simpler ones.

The grammar topics, in turn, are probably not sufficiently detailed for a beginner, but they would make good refreshers for those who vaguely remember studying, say, the imperfect tense, but don't remember what it's for and don't want an entire review lesson or just a list of forms. It helps if you have enough exposure to Spanish to recognize that the English "translations" of the phrases aren't always exact.

The cultural topics are extremely useful, more so than many newer books. They go far beyond the usual superficial stuff I've seen again and again, discussing such cross-cultural topics as ideas of honor and how this relates to privacy concerns. The vocabulary, too, includes useful tables such as "common children's terms" (the equivalents for "tummy" etc.). In addition to its use for personal review and study, I can see it being used and assigned as part of an advanced practical medical Spanish course offered as a followup to broader beginner and intermediate studies.

I really enjoy this book. It is not a basic spanish book, but it is designed to supplement any education in the spanish language. I appreciate the focus on healthcare! Excellent transaction.