Handing over and letting go: using online continuing medical education in teaching and assessing medical English language and communication skills to undergraduates

In the last few decades the medical community has increasingly underlined the necessity for medical students and healthcare professionals to acquire adequate and patient-friendly medical language and communication skills. Although teachers of foreign languages for medical purposes are usually not medically trained, their learners present them with very specific content and communication needs. Medical undergraduates who have entered the clinical phase of their programme are particularly keen to remain within the boundaries of their newly acquired expertise. Teachers of English for Medical Purposes easily recognize their need to deepen and broaden their medical knowledge, and needs-responsive teaching in this context therefore often involves specific materials development. Although implementing material from continuing medical education (CME) may seem a bridge too far at first sight, careful selection of content geared to students' medical knowledge at a particular stage in their clinical study programme avoids overstepping the mark. Well-chosen online interactive CME materials engage the students in authentic language in a context they immediately recognize as typical of their future workplace. The learners in the course described in this article are medical undergraduates in their fifth year who need to attend the course to prepare them for a clinical placement in an English-speaking environment abroad. The article describes how CME materials have become part of teaching practice and oral assessment in a two-semester course of medical English organized on behalf of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leuven in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium.