Los Seres Humanos Matter: A Hispanic Health Story from Texas.

Abstract

Latino health deserves intense focus in promoting a just health care system. Despite the surprisingly positive health outcomes associated with the "Hispanic Paradox" phenomenon, the trend of Latino immigrants tending to have better health outcomes than other minorities, linguistic issues persist. The following essay is a combination of actual patient encounters through my experiences serving Spanish-speaking patients, as a medical student and Spanish speaker, and a reflection on the clash between impersonal interpretation services and Hispanic cultural values. I then present potential initiatives to improve rapport in patient encounters while maintaining the standard of care across foreign language barriers.