Description

This program provides students with the opportunity to explore health care in a developing country while furthering their Spanish language skills and gain an understanding of the life and culture of Costa Rica. This six-week program provides health professionals and university students in the area of health with the necessary language proficiency to enable them to work and interact with Spanish speaking patients and their families, as well as with colleagues in a Spanish-speaking environment.

The program consists of two components, linguistic and topical, to facilitate the development of vocabulary in the health and medical field, and the improvement of the students' ability to communicate correctly and effectively in Spanish.

The topical content of the program discusses the most relevant aspects of the health system in Costa Rica and will be covered in a 30-hour course (i.e., 2 credits) distributed in two weekly sessions of conferences, exercises, site visits to clinics, hospitals, and other related sites, and a workshop on the topic of the week.

The linguistic component will consist of a total of 60 hours of intensive Spanish (i.e., 4 credits) with the general objectives of training students to speak fluently in Spanish, preparing them to interview patients, complete patients' files, elaborate medical reports, read texts of medical relevance effectively.

Homestays are one of the most important parts of a student's experience, facilitating immersion in and adaptation to the new culture and language, and helping students to integrate into local society. In order to assure students will have a great experience with their host families, ICDS has a Homestay Coordinator with a great deal of experience in the selection of host families and the placement of students with an appropriate host family, according to what the student has indicated as his/her preferences in the housing application.

ICDS also offers many service-learning, volunteer, internship and research opportunities to give ICDS students the chance to put into practice what they learn in the classroom and to use their Spanish skills, to be involved with leading practitioners in the field, and to contribute to the efforts for sustainable human development in Costa Rica. To learn more about these opportunities, please download the attached PDF.

ICDS student services include on-site orientation, arrival and departure transportation, a counselor on staff, assistance with student visas, healthcare recommendations, and a PO box mailing address. ICDS is a very small organization and is therefore able to provide students with personalized attention for anything that comes up!