UNDERSTANDING NEEDS AND DESIGNING ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING SUPPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL DOCTORS – A DESIGN-BASED RESEARCH PROJECT

Within the medical education context, a key issue in aiding physicians in training, is to develop effective patient-doctor communication, because this effective patient-doctor communication is central to physicians ultimately being able to deliver effective healthcare. In both the UK and US healthcare contexts, international medical graduates (physicians) constitute about 25% of the physician workforce. The educational challenge of equipping these doctors with communications skills becomes even more pronounced in these cases of physicians whose first language is not English because language intertwines with communication issues. Yet, within the medical education context, very little is known about the specific language and communication educational interventions that would be both practically implementable and effective in aiding English as a Second language development.

This design based research explores physician attitudes towards language learning and outlines design propositions to develop a pragmatic, truly feasible online language learning curriculum for international medical graduates (physicians). The design propositions will be grounded in approach and attitude formation theories as well as second language acquisition theory. With regards to specific content, the presentation will feature both survey and follow-up interviews conducted with physicians and stakeholders with regards to attitudes about language learning and needs; early iterations of curriculum innovation will also be showcased.

This presentation would be of interest to adult educators, medical educators and second language educators. Importantly, the presentation will provide an example and a forum to discuss design based research (DBR): a cyclic, interventionist methodology potentially of great interest to educators interested in hands-on yet rigorous research.