Teaching medical English to foreign-language doctors

Acquisition of an advanced medical degree beyond licensure and specialization is advantageous and encouraged in Swedish medical education. Since a thesis and a number of published works, usually in English are required, there is considerable interest in medical writing by doctors and medical scientists. A voluntary course in 'Biomedical Authorship' which included presentation of oral reports was offered by the Karolinska Institutes' Medical Faculty. This course was intended to prepare participants for their thesis work and for presentations at scientific congresses. The course revealed that the principle difficulty was not in English skills which were rather good, but in the students' inexperience in critically rereading what they had written and making suitable revisions. A case study method was used so that students acquired experience in critically reading and correcting their own work and that of others. An instructor who understood the evolution of academic Swedish was of considerable help in explaining some of the 'Swenglishisms' that arose during the course. The oral presentation portion, which used videotapes of students, showed the students as lacking experience in basic public speaking and as frequently being apprehensive. This was much improved by taped poetry readings, scientific reports and slide shows. This Swedish experience should apply to teaching biomedical writing in the other Scandinavian countries and in Northern Europe.