ABSTRACT
In this chapter, students of Beginning Medical Spanish will acquire the necessary oral communicative skills that will allow them to appropriately conduct a physical examination using both reflexive and non-reflexive verbs in the present tense. This interaction will involve including commands or instructions to the exchange by using the infinitive construction with favor de as a means of making polite request of patients during the examination. Throughout the physical, students will be able to successfully elicit information from their patients about the type, duration and location of their pain by using the verbs (doler) and (molestar) and pertinent vocabulary. By the end of the chapter, students will be able to complete the examination by discussing and recommending medication to alleviate patient pain, while taking into consideration that responses to pain may be culturally shaped by levels of acculturation. In some more traditional Hispanic communities, machismo may frame a more gendered response to pain and medication.
