Breakdown of En el hospital, la enfermera me puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
Questions & Answers about En el hospital, la enfermera me puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
In Spanish you almost always need an article (like el, la, un, una) in front of singular countable nouns.
- En el hospital = in the (specific) hospital – this is the natural, standard form.
- En hospital sounds incomplete or ungrammatical in normal speech.
You only drop the article in a few special patterns (like some professions after ser: Soy médico, Es enfermera), but not after a preposition like en when you’re talking about a place.
So for places, think:
- en el hospital, en la escuela, en el supermercado, etc., not en hospital, en escuela, etc.
No, not in this sentence. En and a express different ideas:
- En el hospital = in/at the hospital (location).
- Al hospital (from a + el) = to the hospital (movement or direction).
Your sentence describes where the action happens, so location is needed:
- En el hospital, la enfermera me puso una vacuna… = In the hospital, the nurse gave me a vaccine…
If you talked about going there, you would use al:
- Fui al hospital y allí la enfermera me puso una vacuna.
I went to the hospital and there the nurse gave me a vaccine.
La enfermera is the feminine form: the (female) nurse.
- enfermero = male nurse → el enfermero
- enfermera = female nurse → la enfermera
Spanish marks grammatical gender on both the noun and the article:
- el enfermero
- la enfermera
If in your situation the nurse was a man, you’d say:
- En el hospital, el enfermero me puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
Me is the indirect object pronoun and tells us who receives the vaccine: to me.
- La enfermera me puso una vacuna = The nurse gave me a vaccine / gave me a shot.
Without me, the sentence would be:
- La enfermera puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
Grammatically that means The nurse put a vaccine against the flu (somewhere) and doesn’t clearly say it was given to me. In normal Spanish, when someone gives/does something to/for a person, you include the indirect object pronoun:
- Me puso una vacuna. – She gave me a shot.
- Te puso una vacuna. – She gave you a shot.
- Le puso una vacuna (a él / a ella). – She gave him/her a shot.
You can add a mí for emphasis, but you still keep the pronoun:
- La enfermera me puso a mí una vacuna contra la gripe.
Not in this tense and form. With a simple conjugated verb in Spanish, object pronouns normally go before the verb:
- ✔ La enfermera me puso una vacuna.
- ✘ La enfermera puso me una vacuna.
You can attach me to infinitives, gerunds, and affirmative commands:
- Va a ponerme una vacuna. / Me va a poner una vacuna.
- Está poniéndome una vacuna. / Me está poniendo una vacuna.
- Póngame una vacuna, por favor.
But with a single conjugated verb like puso, the correct position is before the verb: me puso.
In Spanish, poner is the most common verb with vaccines and injections:
- poner una vacuna – to give a vaccine / to give a shot
- poner una inyección – to give an injection
Literally poner means to put, but in this kind of medical context it’s idiomatic:
- La enfermera me puso una vacuna.
- El médico me puso una inyección.
You can say dar una inyección, but in Spain you’ll hear poner more often for this medical action. For vaccines, poner una vacuna is the standard phrase; dar una vacuna sounds less natural.
Both can be correct, but there’s a nuance:
La enfermera me puso una vacuna (contra la gripe).
Focuses on the act of giving the vaccine, the physical shot.La enfermera me vacunó (contra la gripe).
Focuses on the result (I became vaccinated), and is a bit more general.
Both are used in Spain. In everyday speech about getting a shot for something specific, poner una vacuna is extremely common.
You can also use the reflexive form when the subject is you:
- Me vacuné contra la gripe. = I got vaccinated against the flu.
Puso is the third-person singular of the preterite of poner, and it presents the action as a completed event in the past.
- La enfermera me puso una vacuna.
The nurse gave me a shot (once, finished).
Other options:
La enfermera me ponía una vacuna cada año.
(imperfect: repeated/habitual or background)
The nurse used to give me a shot every year.La enfermera me ha puesto una vacuna.
(present perfect: in Spain, often used for a past action linked to the present, especially “today/this week/this year”)
The nurse has given me a shot (recently / today).
In your example, it sounds like a single, completed event at a specific moment, so puso (preterite) is the natural choice.
Poner is irregular in several tenses.
Preterite (simple past, completed actions):
- yo puse
- tú pusiste
- él / ella / usted puso
- nosotros pusimos
- vosotros pusisteis
- ellos / ellas / ustedes pusieron
So your form puso is: él/ella puso.
Present (for reference):
- yo pongo
- tú pones
- él/ella pone, etc.
Past participle:
- puesto – e.g. me han puesto una vacuna (they’ve given me a vaccine).
You normally need the article una here:
- me puso una vacuna = gave me a vaccine / gave me a shot.
Without una, me puso vacuna sounds very odd in standard Spanish; it’s not how people naturally speak.
You use una because:
- vacuna is a singular, countable noun, and
- you mean one vaccine (one dose).
If you’re speaking about vaccines in general, you’d change the structure:
- La vacuna contra la gripe es importante. – The flu vaccine is important.
- Me pusieron varias vacunas. – They gave me several vaccines.
The usual preposition for vaccines against diseases is contra:
- una vacuna contra la gripe – a vaccine against the flu
- una vacuna contra la COVID-19
- una vacuna contra la hepatitis B
Contra literally means against and expresses opposition to the disease.
- para would suggest for a purpose, and de would normally mean of/from, so:
- vacuna para la gripe sounds off or ambiguous.
- vacuna de la gripe is occasionally heard, but vacuna contra la gripe is the standard and clearest form.
Spanish often uses the definite article el/la with names of illnesses:
- la gripe – the flu
- el cáncer – cancer
- la diabetes – diabetes
- el sarampión – measles
So:
- Tiene gripe. and Tiene la gripe. → both exist, but la gripe is very common.
- In a construction like vacuna contra la gripe, the article is almost obligatory; contra gripe sounds incomplete.
In English you usually say flu without the, but in Spanish including la is normal and correct here.
Yes. Both are correct:
- En el hospital, la enfermera me puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
- La enfermera me puso una vacuna contra la gripe en el hospital.
Differences:
- Starting with En el hospital slightly emphasizes the place: In the hospital, (this happened)…
- Putting en el hospital at the end is more neutral and probably the most common order in speech.
Spanish word order is relatively flexible for adverbial phrases (place, time, etc.), as long as you keep pronouns in the right position (me puso, not puso me).
vacuna = the vaccine itself (the substance), and by extension “a shot” when it’s a vaccine.
- Me puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
vacunación = the process or act of vaccinating, usually more formal or technical.
- Campaña de vacunación contra la gripe. – Flu vaccination campaign.
inyección = an injection (any injection, not necessarily a vaccine).
- Me puso una inyección de antibiótico.
In your sentence, una vacuna contra la gripe clearly means “a flu vaccine / a flu shot.”
They’re related but not identical.
En el hospital, la enfermera me puso una vacuna contra la gripe.
Focus on who performed the action (the nurse) and where it happened. The subject is la enfermera.Me vacuné contra la gripe.
Literally “I vaccinated myself against the flu,” but idiomatically: I got vaccinated against the flu.
The subject is yo (understood), and we don’t mention who gave the shot or where.
So:
- If you care about the nurse and the place, use the original sentence.
- If you care about the fact that you got vaccinated, Me vacuné contra la gripe is perfect.