192 Must Know Spanish Verbs for Healthcare

Verbs are the glue that stick all of your Spanish vocabulary together and allow you to string together complete thoughts in Spanish. In this lesson you will learn 192 essential verbs for Spanish communication in clinical settings.

Here is the 192 Must-Know Spanish Verbs for Healthcare lesson that I taught to the Facebook group:

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In this free medical lesson you will learn:

• 103 most common verbs in Spanish: verbos generales pero súper comunes. You probably learned the majority of them in your high school or college Spanish class, so today we are focusing on the meaning of these verbs (not necesarily in their conjugation)

• 90 Clinical Verbs in Spanish: or verbos para la clínica. These verbs are super useful for the clinic because you will be able to express specifics ideas and actions. You don’t usually learn these verbs in your general Spanish class so you will boost your medical vocabulary and I am sure your patients will appreciate it! 🙂

How to Study and Effectively Learn Spanish Verbs

Regardless of where you work in the clinical setting, you always have to pick up some verbs and learn some verb tenses to communicate better with your patients. That’s the reason why we have selected 192 common Spanish verbs for healthcare so that you will be able to learn them and use them right away.

Steps to Learn these 192 Spanish Verbs

There is a lot of information to learn so you need to break it down into steps.

Step 1: Learn Verbs Spanish > English: This is usually the easiest way to study as you recognize similar words and cognates.

Step 2: Learn Verbs English > Spanish: When you go from English to Spanish, you are working on your ability to express yourself and conversely when you go from Spanish to English, you are working on your ability to listen to someone saying something and comprehend it. This is because English is your reference point.

Three Learning Techniques

1. Old School Technique: Fichas

Just create some fichas or flashcards and put the Spanish verb on one side and the English meaning on the other side.

2. Cheapskate Technique: Papel (de renglón angosto)

You just want to steal a college-ruled page from a notebook, fold it in half and then add the Spanish verbs in one half and their English equivalent in the other.

The objective is not to see both the English and the Spanish verbs at the same time because you will not test your knowledge if you are able to see the words.

3. Siglo 21 Technique: Quizlet

Quizlet is an online learning platform where we have uploaded several study sets. You just have to go to Quizlet and start studying the Spanish verbs there 🙂

The good thing about Quizlet is that you can study using different features such as Learn, Write, Spell, Flashcards, Test, Match, and Gravity. You can try each of these features until you find the one that fits your learning needs.

The Rule of 30 – La Regla de 30

The rule of 30 or Regla de 30 is so simple:

• Select 30 verbs.
• Study them for 30 minutes 3 times a week.

You probably nail this set of verbs just after two sessions of 30 minutes or even in just one session. The idea is dividing the verbs into groups of 30 verbs each, learn them from Spanish to English and vice-versa and then go on for the next group.

Next Steps After Learning Spanish Verbs

Once you learn all these 192 Spanish verbs, there are some steps to take in order to incorporate them on your conversations with your patients:

1. Focus on the fast conjugation for the most important verbal tenses:

The most important verbal tenses for you to learn are:

• Presente: once you learn the present tense, you are able to learn two other useful tenses for the clinic setting:
  • Imperativo: this is the command tense.
  • Futuro: this is the future tense or at least the most common one that the majority of Spanish speakers use. It is built using a combination of the verb “Ir” (to go), the conjunction “a” and an unconjugated verb, you that you obtain: Yo voy a comer, usted va a hablar, él/ella va a salir, etc.
• Pretérito: The preterite past tense.
• Imperfecto: The imperfect past tense.
• Perfecto del Presente: This is the present perfect tense, which is used to talk about past events that are still valid in the present.
• Pretérito Perfecto: This is the past perfect tense.

With these seven tenses, you could do almost anything you need to in the clinical setting in Spanish.

2. Practice the Conjugations:

You can poke around on our blog or in our YouTube videos and you can see how to do all these tenses and get lessons for all these tenses; but for practicing the conjugations, we recommend:

• Get two wooden dice from Hobby Lobby
• On one dice, put all the subjects in Spanish on each side of the wood of it.
• On the other dice, put some common tenses that you want to study
• Roll them both at the same time, go to your list of Spanish verbs and start practicing the conjugations right away!

Let’s start with 103 of the most common verbs in Spanish:

*Haber is the infinitive verb for Hay (there is, there are), Había (there was, there were) and the following helping verbs for forming perfect tenses: he, has, ha, hemos, han (present perfect) & había, habías, había, habíamos, habían (past perfect)

Now let’s look at a few clinical verbs in Spanish:

Su tarea – Your Homework

1. Review the notes & vocabulary
2. Identify additional points and topics to discuss with patients
   • Let me know if you need help 🙂
3. Remember to keep it simple if you need to
4. Ask for help in the comments below
5. Give it a try with your patients!

I packaged all of these verbs into some flashcards for you to study – study your medical Spanish verbs here!

I packaged all of this into easily downloadable .pdf notes–Get your copy for free today!

Free Medical Spanish Terminology Test

If you want to do a free Medical Spanish terminology test head over to certified Spanish, we are currently building a certification platform where you can practice this test for free. You just have to create a free user account here and start practicing your Español Médico 🙂

Keep up the good work speaking responsible Spanish to your patients! Check out our other books, classes & products to help you learn medical Spanish!

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