Speaker
Description
At Hiroshima University, medical English research and education has focused primarily on undergraduates in their second and third years of study, with a particular emphasis on body systems and related hospital specialisms in preparation for clinical training. Building on this foundation, we outline the early stages of a new project that extends our research into particular clinical specialisms and the hospital settings where professional training and development take place throughout medical careers.
In its initial phase, the project focuses on neurosurgery. The research examines a selection of important clinical processes and procedures. These are analysed to identify patterns of discourse, language acts (such as advising, informing, and offering), and key lexis used in professional communication within neurosurgical clinical practice. To support this analysis, the field of neurosurgery is first organised into major areas such as cerebrovascular disease, brain tumours, anomalies (e.g., hydrocephalus), and functional disease (e.g., trigeminal neuralgia). Discourse analysis is conducted on neurosurgery reference materials used in patient treatment, while corpus analysis is applied to case reports drawn from these areas.
Based on the analysis, non-technical vocabulary and phrases used in communication between medical professionals and patients are identified. Drawing on the research team’s experience in developing pedagogic word lists embedded in illustrative contexts, the project also explores how learning materials can be developed to support both medical students and hospital staff working in these specialist fields.