Facultad de ciencias Médicas "Mariana Grajales Cuello". Holguín.
Sistema de ejercicios complementarios del texto Practical Medicine para el desarrollo de habilidades con el inglés médico.
System of Complementary Exercises for Practical Medicine
Gustavo Pérez Almaguer1, Inés Pérez Irons2, Raisa Macías Sera3
1
Profesor Asistente, Departamento de Idiomas, Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de
Holguin.
2 Profesor Instructor, Departamento
de Idiomas, Fac. C. Médicas de Holguin.
3 Profesor Instructor, Departamento
de Idiomas, Fac. C. Médicas de Holguin
RESUMEN
Los estudiantes de medicina en Cuba, al llegar al cuarto año de su carrera, comienzan el estudio del inglés médico mediante el libro de texto PRACTICAL MEDICINE. Sin embargo este texto, como muchos otros de inglés médico, carece de los ejercicios necesarios para el desarrollo gradual de habilidades relacionadas con el ejercicio de la profesión utilizando la lengua inglesa, tales como comunicarse con los pacientes o sus familiares; informar y discutir un caso médico informalmente; presentar y discutir un caso médico formalmente ante un auditorio; redactar un informe sobre un caso médico; y comprender información médica proveniente de una fuente oral o de una fuente escrita. Para resolver este problema los autores, profesores de inglés médico de la Universidad Médica de Holguín, Cuba, diseñaron un sistema de ejercicios que fue aplicado y validado durante tres cursos académicos , desde el 1997-98 hasta el curso 1999-2000, en un total de 36 grupos con alrededor de 500 estudiantes del cuarto año de medicina con resultados altamente satisfactorios. Como resultado final , los autores confeccionaron un cuaderno con las correspondientes orientaciones para el profesor y para el estudiante, y con el sistema completo de 152 ejercicios que se vinculan a los contenidos del texto PRACTICAL MEDICINE. No obstante, aunque diseñados para este texto, los ejercicios pueden adaptarse para utilizarlos con cualquier otro texto o programa de estudio del inglés médico.
Palabras Claves: Enseñanza/Métodos; Aprendizaje/Métodos; Educación Médica; Estudiantes de Medicina.
ABSTRACT
In the Cuban medical schools, the medical students start studying medical English when they get to their fourth year of studies, using the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE, the text officially established for the study of the English language during the first semester of this year . However, this textbook does not contain exercises to lead the students to the development of some professional language skills which doctors need for the practice of their career, such as interviewing patients; reporting and discussing medical cases informally; presenting and discussing a case before an audience formally; writing the report of a case; and also getting medical information from an oral or a written source. To overcome this difficulty, the authors of this paper devised a system of exercises to contribute to the development of such skills. The exercises, which were carefully graded from the simpler to the more complex ones, aim at setting the bases and starting the development of the professional language skills mentioned above. All the exercises have been thoroughly tested in the classroom throughout three academic years with a total of 36.
4th year medical classes and around 500 students at the Mariana Grajales Medical School of Holguín, starting in the academic year 1997/98 up to 1999/2000. With this paper, the authors present a system of 152 exercises which correspond to the 43 lessons of the eight units of the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE. The results achieved with this system of exercises have been highly satisfactory.
Key Word: Teaching/Methods; Learning/Methods; Education, Medical; Students, Medical.
INTRODUCTION
When the medical students begin their fourth year of studies, in the clinical phase, they have already studied general English for three years and have therefore had practice on the four main language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They then start studying medical English using the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE, the text officially established for the teaching of English in the first semester of the fourth year of the medical specialty in the Cuban medical schools. However, this textbook does not contain exercises for the development of professional language skills related to the practice of the medical career, such as interviewing patients; reporting a case orally and discussing it with other doctors informally; presenting a case and discussing it before an audience formally; writing a case report; and also getting medical information from an oral or a written source. To overcome this difficulty, the authors of this paper decided to work on the making of a system of exercises which gradually led the students to the development of such language skills, and to test its effectiveness by using the exercises for three consecutive academic years, during which they would be improved according to the results of their practical use in the classroom. To present how this work has been done and its practical results with the corresponding system of exercises is the purpose of this paper.
METHODS AND MATERIAL
First of all, the authors carried out a thorough and careful analysis of each and every lesson of all the eight units which make up the contents of the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE, in order to decide which exercises would be devised for each lesson according to its contents and characteristics. These exercises were mainly intended for the development of the following professional medical skills in the English language.
-Getting information of medical interest from a spoken source. (Listening-Writing)
-Interviewing patients or their relatives. (Speaking-Listening)
-Reporting to and discussing medical cases with other doctors informally. (Speaking-Listening)
-Presenting medical cases before an audience and discussing them formally. (Speaking-Listening)
-Getting information of medical interest from a written source. (Reading-Writing)
-Writing reports of medical cases. (Reading-Writing)
To achieve this the authors considered necessary to devise exercises which fulfilled the following requirements.
1. Exercises carefully graded as to difficulty, from the simpler to the more complex.
2. Exercises directly linked to each of the 43 lessons which make up the eight units of the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE.
3. Exercises which contributed, either directly or indirectly, to the preparation of the students for the development of the target medical skills in the English language.
Taking this into account, the types of exercises which were prepared aim at the following purposes:
-Getting acquainted with the listening of interviews between a doctor and a patient, or a patient’s relative, and getting relevant information from that source.
-Getting acquainted with the kind of questions that doctors usually ask patients, or their relatives, in English in a medical interview and the purpose of these questions.
-Practicing such interviews.
-Practicing the pronunciation of selected medical and related terms and expressions which appear in the dialogues of all the lessons of the textbook.
-Understanding written information from the reading of dialogues dealing with informal oral reports and discussions of medical cases.
-Taking down notes of relevant medical information from such sources and classifying it for medical purposes.
-Reporting and discussing medical cases informally.
-Presenting medical cases before an audience and discussing them formally.
-Writing the report of medical cases.
-Giving Spanish equivalents for selected English medical terms and expressions.
Another aspect which was taken into account for the devising and grading of the exercises was the order in which the different units of PRACTICAL MEDICINE were to be taught. Mainly considering the importance of the contents and the students’ interests, the authors taught the units, and consequently the exercises were devised, following this order:
Unit 1. Hypertension
Unit 2. Myocardial infarction
Unit 8. Hypothyroidism
Unit 4. Pneumonia
Unit 6. Duodenal Ulcer
Unit 7. Cirrhosis of the liver
Unit 5. Asthma
Unit 3. Tonsillitis
Anyway, other teachers might prefer a different order, for which it is only necessary to adapt the exercises to the order in which the units are taught.
Since this system of exercises intends to set the bases and start developing the professional language skills already stated, the authors also consulted the contents of the textbooks that follow PRACTICAL MEDICINE, that is, PRACTICAL SURGERY, and MEDICALLY SPEAKING, which are taught in the second semester of the fourth year and in the fifth year respectively. The authors also consulted medical dictionaries and other medical sources both in English and Spanish, all of which are listed in the Bibliography section of this paper.
The exercises were tested for three consecutive academic years, from 1997/98 through 1999/2000, in a total of 36 classes of 4th year medical students (around 500 students) at the Mariana Grajales Medical School of Holguín, and according to the results the necessary changes and improvements were introduced.
Finally, all the exercises were computer-processed using the text processor WORD of the WINDOWS 95 operative system.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In total, the system of exercises devised by the authors is made up of 152 exercises, corresponding to the 43 lessons that make up the eight units of the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE. Their distribution for each unit and their lessons is as follows:
Unit 1 (Lessons 1 to 6) : 23 exercises.
Unit 2 (Lessons 7 to 12) : 21 exercises.
Unit 8 (Lessons 40 to 43): 15 exercises.
Unit 4 (Lessons 17 to 22): 21 exercises.
Unit 6 (Lessons 28 to 32): 20 exercises.
Unit 7 (Lessons 33 to 39): 22 exercises.
Unit 5 (Lessons 23 to 27): 16 exercises.
Unit 3 (Lessons 13 to 16): 14 exercises.
Before the use of this system of exercises, the 4th year medical students proved to have great difficulties in the development of the oral and written medical skills in the language, and when they finished the 4th year their results with these skills were not very good. However, once these exercises were applied since the academic year 1997/1998, the improvements they have shown have been highly satisfactory.
The system of exercises is presented in the form of a booklet as an appendix to this paper.
CONCLUSIONS
The textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE, officially established for the study of medical English in the first semester of the 4th year for the medical students in Cuban medical schools, do not contain exercises for the development of the oral and written skills in the English language.
The authors of this paper have devised a system of 152 complementary exercises directly linked to each of the 43 lessons which make up the eight units of the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE. This system of exercises is presented as an appendix to this paper.
The exercises were applied and tested for three academic years (1997/98 through 1999/2000) with 36 classes of around 500 4th year medical students at the Mariana Grajales Medical School of Holguín.
The results obtained were highly satisfactory since all of the students showed a great improvement in the development of the oral and written medical skills in the English language as compared with the results obtained before this system of exercises was applied.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The authors strongly recommend the use of the system of exercises they have devised by all the teachers who work with the textbook PRACTICAL MEDICINE.
A copy of the booklet with the exercises should be placed at the Information Center of the Holguín Medical School for the teachers and students who need to consult and use it.
The existence of this system of exercises should also be informed to the English Departments of the other medical schools in this country for them to have the choice of using it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Borgman, Henry, et al. Medicine: Practical Medicine, (Primera edición en inglés,1984), Ciudad de
La Habana: Edición Revolucionaria, 1988.
__________________. Medicine: Practical Surgery, (Primera edición en inglés, 1984), Ciudad de
La Habana: Edición Revolucionaria, 1988.
Butterworths Medical Dictionary. (Second Edition 1978), Macdonald Critchley, Editor-in-Chief),
Ciudad de La Habana: Científico-Técnica, 1987.
Diccionario de medicina Oceano Mosby. Barcelona: Oceano, 1994
Diccionario Terminológico de Ciencias Médicas (Undécima edición española), Ciudad de La
Habana: Científico-Técnica, 1984.
Glendinning,Eric H., and Beverly A.S.Holmstron. English in Medicine, Second Edition, United
Kingdom: Cambridge University Press,1998.
Merriam-Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary, Springfield, Ma.: Merriam-Webster Incorporated,
1996.
Sandler, P.L. Medically Speaking. London: BBC English by Radio and Television.
Talaska, Frances. A Manual of Laboratory & Diagnostic Tests, 4th Edition, Philadelphia:
Lippincott Company, 1992.
The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 331, No.10, Sept.8,1994; Vol.333, No.4, July 27,
1995 and No.25, Dec.21, 1995, European Edition, England: Massachusetts Medical Society.
Tierney,Jr.,Lawrence M., et al., Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment, 34th Edition,
Connecticut: Appleton & Lauge, 1995.
Correspondencia: Gustavo Pérez
Almaguer, Narciso López No. 172 e/ Martí y Luz Caballero,
Holguín.
E-mail: gperal@cristal.hlg.sld.cu