Coordinator: Dr. Letty CHAN
Course Description:
This is a one-semester course for third-year students of Chinese Medicine. The course has two main strands: medical terminology and oral and written patient history presentations (including explanation of differential diagnoses). The medical terminology strand of the course has been designed to complement the students’ studies for their major, for example in the areas of biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, whilst the patient history strand complements the clinical programme. Through a variety of in-class activities, including discussion and simulations, practice tasks and study of language in context, students will focus on delivering coherent case histories in oral and written form. The medical terminology section of the course will focus on identifying the major elements of medical terms and the rules which are used to combine elements. This will help students to further extend their range of medical terminology and equip them for further independent learning. The out-of-class learning component of the course will include supplementing the main course aims by consolidating students’ understanding of the genre of patient case histories through peer evaluation and self reflective activities. Students will also practise medical terminology definitions, etc. through a series of online exercises, such as cloze passages and matching exercises.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Recognise medical word elements such as affixes and roots in order to accurately form and or define medical terms
- Demonstrate synthesis and coherence in written and oral presentation of patient case histories by following the conventions of the genre, such as correct sequencing of information
- Discuss and explain differential diagnoses using language of likelihood
Strategies:
- Working on interactive medical terminology tasks with emphasis on word analysis, word formation, terms used in context and pronunciation strategies (etymology).
- Practice in presentation skills and discussion skills
- Developing awareness of stengths and weakenesses in presentation skills through self-reflection
- Group collaboration in research and discussion
- Developing accuracy and concision for oral and written patient histories
Assessment Methods:
(with breakdown of percentage weighting of the various methods)
- Tests (25%)
- Oral Presentations (50%)
- Other genres of writing (25%)