Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Background Language discordance between patients and providers is common on short-term global health and international medical mission trips, and may increase the risk of miscommunication affecting histories, diagnoses, and treatment. Formal medical language instruction is often not feasible for short-term volunteers requiring frequent reliance on professional interpreters. Whether brief, targeted pre-departure language training provides additional benefit alongside interpreter use remains unclear. This study evaluated a targeted medical Spanish crash course delivered before a one-week medical mission trip to Peru. Methods Participants completed anonymous, voluntary surveys before a one-hour case-based medical Spanish crash course, immediately afterward, and after trip conclusion, linked by self-generated identifiers. Outcomes included self-reported comfort, confidence, and preparedness communicating in Spanish, along with post-trip measures of phrase use, phrase recognition, perceived communication effectiveness, and near-miss safety events. Paired and unpaired comparisons were performed using t-tests, with significance defined as p ≤ 0.05. Results Of 31 eligible participants, 77.4% completed the pre-course survey, 32.3% completed the post-course survey, and 54.8% completed the post-trip survey. In the paired post-course analysis (n = 10), self-rated comfort taking a history in Spanish increased from 1.6 to 3.3 (p = 0.000257) and comfort explaining a diagnosis increased from 1.3 to 2.5 (p = 0.0039). In the paired post-trip analysis (n = 17), comfort taking a history in Spanish increased from 1.44 to 2.88 (p = 0.0006) and perceived ability to understand Spanish-speaking patients increased from 1.2 to 3.0 (p = 0.0006). Post-trip, 78.6% of respondents reported using taught phrases often or almost every encounter, 64.3% reported improved communication ability, 64.3% found the accompanying cheat sheet very or extremely helpful, and 94.1% reported no communication-related near-miss events. Conclusions A brief, pre-departure medical Spanish crash course was feasible to deliver and was associated with self-reported improvements in communication comfort, confidence, and preparedness among short-term mission participants, alongside frequent real-world use and few reported safety concerns. The course is intended to complement, rather than replace, professional interpreters. Larger studies using objective and patient-facing outcome measures are needed to validate these findings. Trial Registration This prospective educational intervention study was determined exempt by the Texas A&M University Institutional Review Board, Study 2026-0001, approved January 30, 2026. Clinical trial number: not applicable.</p>