Medicine and the Arts: Thinking Differently
John Skelton
John Skelton is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Communication at Birmingham University Medical School, where he was also Head of Education Quality for all clinical courses. He is now President of EALTHY.
John is an English Literature graduate, who worked in ELT/ESP and Applied Linguistics in UK and abroad before joining Birmingham Medical School. In addition to his contributions to Linguistics/ELT, he has taught and published in Medical Humanities, particularly literature.
Medical Humanities is taught often, and often well, around the world. In this talk, I want to address just one important aspect of the topic, illustrating my arguments with a wide variety of examples from literature and the visual arts. The issue, I suggest, is that students and teachers sometimes assume that the arts should be studied purely in order to enable people to feel, or empathise, more deeply. They do of course serve this function, and certainly there is the risk that exposure only to mediocre art means that people are condemned to be as shallow as, for example, the TV soap operas they consume. There is no doubt that a training in the arts can help with this. However, I will argue that, where a clinical training quite properly teaches health professionals to be rigorous in the pursuit of clinical certainty, a training in the Humanities teaches an understanding of the uncertainty and ambivalence of the world as we all experience it. I suggest therefore that a central element of teaching the arts to clinical students or practitioners should be to help them recognise, articulate and be comfortable with the functional ambiguity literature and visual art often demonstrate, as a way of helping.
Overcoming the Challenges of Inter-cultural Communication within an Internationalised Healthcare Sector with a Globally Mobile Workforce
Emma Brooks
Emma is a lecturer in Language Learning and Intercultural Communication and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London, Institute of Education. Her work centres on the interface between language and healthcare, looking at how medical professionals and patients engage effectively in diverse linguistic environments. She has particular interests in translanguaging, intercultural communication, superdiversity and the role of language in facilitating (in)equalities in healthcare environments.
In the field of intercultural health communication, much of the prevailing research on language has been viewed through the lens of monolingual, monocultural user norms. In the contemporary healthcare landscape however, the increasingly international nature of the workforce, and the diverse populations within which they practice, can be seen to disrupt established assumptions. Drawing on findings from ethnographic research, and the wider literature in which it is situated, this talk is an invitation to rethink the premise of monolingual healthcare, and medical education, through the lens of everyday multilingualism. Illustrating the pragmatic and affective benefits that can be gained when professionals leverage (heritage) language(s) to establish rapport and understanding with patients, I argue that there is an imperative to recognise the value and scope of a multilingual workforce. Nevertheless, in circumstances where (mis)understanding can have real-world clinical consequences, it is equally important to note that flexing one’s linguistic repertoire holds inherent challenges, not least in relation to ensuring intelligibility and (institutional) accountability. It is hoped that this talk will raise the visibility of multilingual healthcare professionals and prompt wider discussions in relation to support, training opportunities and professional development.
Institutional Language as a Factor in Vaccine Hesitancy: Reflections on UK Vaccine Discourses
Zsofia Demjen
Zsofia is Associate Professor at University College London. She works at the intersections of language, mind and healthcare, examining the language used by patients, carers, healthcare professionals, journalists, poets, and writers in metaphor, im/politeness, personal pronouns, negation, narratives and humour, among others. Zsofia is widely published through research articles, chapters in multiple books, has written, edited and co-written books, including Applying Linguistics in Illness and Healthcare Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Researching Language and Health, A Student Guide (Routledge, 2023).
It is well-established that technical/institutional/professional language can cause problems in healthcare contexts. While it often describes clearly defined and precise phenomena to those ‘in the know’ (or indeed operates as a necessary and efficient shorthand), it can cause confusion (Chapple et al 1997; Dahm 2012), anxiety (Caddick et al 2012) and contribute to unhelpful framings of diseases, treatments and people (e.g. Semino et al 2018 on cancer) when encountered by patients, carers and the general public. In this talk I focus on insights from the recent 3-year Economic and Social Research Council-funded project ‘Questioning Vaccination Discourse (Quo Vadis)’ (grant reference: ES/V000926/1) and consider the role that institutional language might play in uncertainty and hesitancy when trying to make vaccination-related decisions for oneself or one’s children. I will look at specific terms being used by laypeople in vaccination discussions online and their uses in institutional texts. I will also discuss potential issues with how institutions sometimes attempt to make technical language more ‘user friendly’. Finally, I reflect on how such attempts might be improved by exploring language use in authentic contexts.