COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1550101
This article is part of the Research TopicNurturing Medical Professionalism in Different Cultural ContextsView all 9 articles
Community Case Study: Mind Your Language: Enhancing Medical Student Learning during Non-English Language Consultations
Provisionally accepted
- The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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General Practice provides an excellent opportunity for students to see patients with undifferentiated presentations and to acknowledge how General Practitioners (GPs) deal with medical complexity, uncertainty and the psycho-social issues facing patients. It is essential that students have experience ofin diverse patient population groups, using . Traditionally, they have access to interpreters to help when non-English speaking patients come to the practicewith language barriers. However, many undergraduate teaching practices have GPs that speak multiple languages, and patients appreciate the opportunity to speak in their own language. The challenge for students is understanding being able to understand what is happening when observing these types of consultations. The Community Team in a UK medical schoolprogramme was aware of the issues, through their student evaluation data. To address this, they developed a protocol to support General Practitioner GP) Clinical Placement Supervisors (CPS) to ensure the best clinical experience for their students, particularly in practices where consultations were not commonly delivered in English. was not commonly spoken for consultations. This has been presented aswork developed into CPS training for CPS and delivered locally and nationally at other medical schools. shared with colleagues in other medical schools in the UK. It also led to development of an experiential learning session, where students attended a practice with non-English consultations in the morning, and then reflected on the experience in the afternoon. It now forms a core part of the student curricular content in the Year 4 GP blockof the MB ChB. This paper highlights the journey to ensure that students can have meaningful learning, in environments where language may be a perceived barrier. It has enabled our students to appreciate the diversity and rich culture of our patients population, the rich cultures of our patients and take forward the learning gleamed from the complexities of non-English consultations.
Keywords: diversity, Diversity and inclusion, Communication Skills, Ethnic minority health, GP placements, Undergraduate Medical Education
Received: 22 Dec 2024; Accepted: 05 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Haque, Naveenan, Shimwell, Farikullah-Mirza, Lindley and Marsden. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Enam Haque, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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