Mind your language: enhancing medical student learning during non-English language consultations

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• General Practice
• Cross-cultural Communication

Background:

• General Practice (GP) offers unique learning opportunities for medical students to manage complex, uncertain, and psychosocial patient issues.
• Ensuring medical students gain experience with diverse patient groups, including those using interpreters due to language barriers, is crucial.
• Practices with multilingual General Practitioners (GPs) present a challenge for students observing consultations not conducted in English.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a protocol supporting GP Clinical Placement Supervisors (CPS) in delivering effective student training.
• To address the challenge of medical student learning in GP settings with non-English consultations.
• To integrate experiential learning about diverse patient communication into the medical curriculum.

Main Methods:

• Development of a protocol for GP Clinical Placement Supervisors (CPS).
• Implementation of CPS training delivered locally and nationally.
• Creation of an experiential learning session involving observation and reflection on non-English consultations.

Main Results:

• A structured approach was established to support student learning in multilingual GP settings.
• Training and experiential sessions were successfully developed and implemented.
• Non-English consultations became a core part of the Year 4 GP curriculum.

Conclusions:

• Medical students can achieve meaningful learning experiences despite language barriers in General Practice.
• The initiative enhanced students' appreciation for patient diversity and cultural richness.
• Learning from complex, non-English consultations equips future GPs to manage diverse patient populations effectively.