In a nation where 35.5 million people identify Spanish as their primary language, it’s no wonder that bilingual healthcare workers are valuable entities. The ability to speak Spanish is a resume booster, and may be the skill that would make a hiring hospital choose you over the competition. Kaplan’s Spanish for Nurses by Rudy Valenzuela, RN is a priceless tool for those who need a brush up in the Spanish language. It has a review of basic Spanish (numbers, days of the week, family members, etc) and chapters including:

• Review of the systems
• Diagnostic tests
• Nursing interventions
• In the emergency room
• In the maternity ward

This past week, an incident occurred in Paris where a Muslim man assaulted a midwife who was treating his wife, reportedly because the midwife removed the patient’s Burqa (traditional head scarf). An article depicting the event can be found here. Although I’m neither accusing the midwife or defending the man’s behavior, this incident serves as a reminder for healthcare workers to always incorporate cultural competencies into our practice. It is the nurse’s role to treat the patient as a whole, which often includes knowledge of foreign cultures and a sensitivity to the patient’s non-medical needs. A list of cultural competencies that the RN should master can be found on this site under patient-centered care. My nursing school required me to purchase Mosby’s Transcultural Nursing by Joyce Newman, which I did not appreciate until I was struggling to write a careplan for a patient from Somalia. The book provides guidelines about cultural values, religious practices and specifics that healthcare workers should be aware of for treating patients from just about every country you can think of.