BSN and a minor in Spanish?

[lizpabian]

So I'm just about to finish my first semester of Freshmen year. I took an introduction to Spanish class because a language class is a general education requirement at my school. My professor suggested that I continue taking Spanish classes and that it would be beneficial for Nursing. Is this true? Have any of you majored in Nursing and minored in Spanish? If so, how challenging was it and did you graduate within 4 years?

Any kind of input would help!

[verene, MSN]

Spanish may be beneficial if you live, or plan to live in an area with a large Spanish speaking population. If you live in an area where the most commonly spoken second language is Vietnamese... then it would be better to study that language instead.

I would caution you to look into your school's requirements for minoring in a language. I was a language major the first time around in college and looked into minoring in a second. It would have been a crazy amount of work, to do. I could have done it if I stayed for a 5th year, or if I'd thought about it earlier and did school in the summers, but I didn't so I graduated with out a minor.

If you want to minor in Spanish make sure you know the requirements and work on figuring out how you are going to fit them in sooner rather than later.

[Maineboundapn]

Hi! If you live in an area where there is a high Spanish speaking population, go for it! I minored in Spanish and am fluent, and have listed this on my CV for every position I have ever pursued. When I was an RN, it helped me secure my preferred specialty units, and when I was in NP school it helped me secure better clinical sites. As an NP, it has also helped make me a more desirable provider as I do not need anyone to provide translation for me, and practices see this as an opportunity to reach a previously untapped or under served population in their area. As a non-native speaker, I find that my patients are often very impressed that I took the time to learn their language as a skill, specifically so I could apply it in my nursing and now NP care. They often bring their whole families, many of whom are second generation and grew up speaking English because I have taken time to treat them in their native language.

[AliNajaCat]

You won't have another chance to take the language again, so do as much of it as you can without having to get so far into requirements for an actual minor that it delays your nursing studies (unless you have the time and money for that fifth year-- then hey, go for it). If you end up being fluent it won't matter if you studied Cervantes and Garcia Lorca in the original, LOL, and you'll be able to find work more easily, as maineboundapn mentions.

[Zyprexa_Ho]

If it was me, I wouldn't minor in anything. Nursing school is hard enough and you don't need more crap to do besides focusing on your GPA and passing the NCLEX. I took four years of high school spanish and was thereby exempt from my university's foreign language requirement, but I'm nowhere near fluent. I can look things up on the Internet and translate that way, but besides that it hasn't been very useful to me. To really become fluent you need to be surrounded by the language and have no choice but to learn it. You're just not going to get that from college.