How can hospitals make sure doctors from foreign countries have necessary language skills?

Beyond interpretation and foreign language skills, there is another language-related issue of crucial importance in medical settings: making sure that doctors and staff possess the necessary language skills to practice in a country’s primary language.

This situation can become problematic in the European Union, where the right to work in other member states has meant mobility in many fields, including the medical profession. In the UK, for example, 30% of doctors are trained outside of the country. While speaking English is ostensibly a condition for working there, some doctors do not possess the full set of linguistic and cultural skills necessary to practice effectively and safely.

A recent article from the Guardian Weekly points out the complexity of communication for medical purposes:

“Communication skills are integral to medical practice, and go far beyond simply ‘talking’ to the patient. Aside from examining and prescribing, doctors are also required to build and maintain rapport, negotiate suitable treatment options, interpret and act upon emotional signs and break bad news. In addition, practitioners need to be able to deal with different patient types - children and the elderly - as well as situations requiring more enhanced levels of sensitivity.

"Linguistic knowledge" is only one element of a much larger set of communicative competencies required to carry out an effective patient encounter.”

(Extract from Doctors’ Language in Need of Intensive Training Care, July 13 2010)

Training medical staff to perfect these communication skills in a language they may master on paper has thus become a distinct field of training in ESP, or English for Special Purposes.

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
  At Language Translation, Inc. in San Diego, California, medical language services are one of our specialties. Don?t hesitate to contact us for more information.