Date of Award

5-1-2024

Degree Type

DPT Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT)

Advisor

Michelle L. Gutierrez

Co-Advisor

Celia Pechak

Abstract

Introduction. The United States has 63.7 million Hispanic/Latino individuals, and approximately 40% of Spanish speakers have limited English proficiency (LEP). Patient-provider language discordance is a major contributor towards health disparities. Hence, many health professions educators offer clinically-relevant Spanish. The primary study purposes were to: 1) identify the prevalence of Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) programs in the United States that incorporate clinically-relevant Spanish language learning in their curriculum; and 2) describe how DPT programs incorporate Spanish language learning in their curriculum.

Review of Literature. Researchers in a 2014 report identified 12 DPT programs offering Spanish; however, the current prevalence is unknown. Additionally, a gap exists in the literature regarding Spanish language instruction approaches, and if the methods align with Second-Language Acquisition (SLA) best practices.

Subjects. Program directors or full-time core faculty from 27 accredited US-based DPT programs.

Methods. The researchers sent an email request to complete a 31-question survey to 270 accredited DPT programs, and then searched DPT curricular plans on the non-responding programs’ websites. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis.

Results. Six of 27 responding programs (22.2%) offered Spanish. Additionally, 35 programs were identified via website search, totaling 41 programs offering Spanish (15.2%). Twenty-five of the total 41 programs (61%) incorporated Spanish via elective course. Five of 6 responding programs that offered Spanish (83.3%) stated they desired to serve the program’s community and 3 (50%) were influenced by the growing Spanish-speaking population. Five of the 6 (83.3%) assessed oral/aural proficiency with a post-test. The 6 responding programs offering Spanish averaged 7.2 of 13 principles of SLA best practices (range=4-11).

Discussion and Conclusion. There has been over a 3-fold increase in DPT programs offering Spanish, but more attention is warranted regarding standardized assessment of Spanish proficiency. Improving physical therapists’ Spanish proficiency may help reduce health disparities caused by language barriers.

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