Professional language use by alumni of the Harvard Medical School Medical Language Program

Despite the growing number of patients with limited English proficiency in the United States, not all medical schools offer medical language courses to train future physicians in practicing language-concordant care. Little is known about the long-term use of non-English languages among physicians who took language courses in medical school. We conducted a cross-sectional study to characterize the professional language use of Harvard Medical School (HMS) alumni who took a medical language course at HMS and identify opportunities to improve the HMS Medical Language Program.