California imports doctors from Mexico to fill gaping holes in farmworker health care
SALINAS, Calif. — Neri Ortiz tucked her hands in her lap as she earnestly recounted her latest health episode to Dr. Eva Perusquia.
Recently at work, where Ortiz packages vegetables overnight, she was hit with a wave of nausea and tears. She managed to pull herself together enough to continue her shift, she told the doctor. But it had been years since she'd experienced such an overwhelming emotional surge.
Perusquia listened closely. Ortiz, 42, had been her patient since last year, after she sought out a Spanish-speaking physician at the Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas. Perusquia had been the first doctor to explain her hypothyroidism and why she needed to take a thyroid medication to regulate the condition. Ortiz knew the doctor would understand how she felt.
Perusquia said the spike in emotion could be related to Ortiz's glucose levels, which can cause mood swings. She would order tests to see whether Ortiz's levels were normal.
Ortiz was grateful. Having Perusquia explain everything in Spanish was a welcome change after years of going to different doctors. Before, English-speaking doctors had left her confused and doubtful that she understood their instructions.
"I understand everything. She explains it all clearly," Ortiz said.
A — which took nearly two decades to implement — made it possible for Mexican doctors such as Perusquia to work in California amid a chronic shortage of Spanish-speaking physicians. Latinos The language and cultural gaps are felt most acutely in the vast rural stretches of California's Central Coast and Central Valley, where immigrants from Mexico and Central America are integral to the farming economy. Hospitals and health care clinics that tend to farmworkers and their families routinely struggle to recruit and retain English-speaking physicians, let alone attract doctors who speak Spanish and Indigenous languages.
