Students add medical French to their skill set

A 25-year-old patient we’ll call Arthur comes into the hospital with a fever, shivering, a cough, and shortness of breath. An intern named Thomas is assigned to do a work-up that will soon be presented to a senior physician.

That situation would seem routine enough for med students trying to imagine how Thomas should proceed, but there’s a catch. The Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse is in Lyon, France, and every person in the encounter speaks only French, from the words used to describe pain to the sometimes-arcane terminology employed by that country’s medical system. If you were plunked down in such a situation, or if you found yourself in an American hospital in which your patient spoke only French, how would you accomplish that most fundamental aspect of health care: communication?

In a classroom in the Jane Hope Building, several medical students used that very scenario to hone their language skills, both spoken and written, as part of a medical French course inaugurated this past fall because of student interest. “I’d love to have the option to practice in a Francophone area,” said Nicole Sitkin, a second-year from California and a “Francophile since the age of 12” who spent 10 months in France as an undergraduate.

When Sitkin arrived in New Haven in 2014, there were no classes that zeroed in on the specific needs of physicians-to-be in French-speaking countries and regions of the United States like Louisiana and parts of New England. She set up a Facebook posting to gauge interest, and when she discovered at least half-a-dozen like-minded students, she and her group met with Michael L. Schwartz, Ph.D., associate dean for curriculum.

“Dean Schwartz is very enthusiastic about student-driven education,” said Sitkin. Yale’s Center for Language Study (YCLS), a unit of the Center for Teaching and Learning, helped set up the class.

“We’ve long offered two levels of a course in Medical Spanish, and it’s required for students who’ll take part in Yale-sponsored medical internship programs in Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Peru,” said YCLS program administrator Minjin Hashbat. “From time to time, we’ve also had a course in Medical Chinese.”

These “language for special programs” classes are non-credit electives that offer 20 hours of instruction each semester, and they’re “definitely not for beginners,” noted Hashbat, who surveyed the medical, nursing, and public health schools to gauge whether enough interested students had the requisite four-plus semesters of French. “We needed a minimum of eight to proceed.” In addition to the students’ objectives, the course also factors in cultural differences and expectations in the norms of health care interactions in the Francophone world, Hashbat said.

Hashbat’s inquiry brought 14 replies, so she tracked down an appropriate textbook and course methodology that was employed to train medical students in France and Canada. Veteran French instructor Marie Boyce, an adjunct professor at Fairfield University who has taught at Yale, was available for the fall, and, as a plus, Boyce is married to a physician.

“I can always check any answers to questions with my husband,” said Boyce, who is well-connected in the French-speaking community in the Northeast and nearby Canada and helps her students tap into those resources. “I’m learning a lot in teaching this course, too.”

For example, in the text, when intern Thomas ordered more oxygen for Arthur, the physician asked that it be delivered “au lunette.” Even Boyce was stumped. “Lunette is the French word for eyeglasses, but thanks to a Google search in class, we discovered that it is also the medical term for the plastic nose piece, which looks a little like glasses, used to administer oxygen. This is an active way to learn vocabulary.”

Second-year M.D./Ph.D. candidate William Hancock-Cerutti, who spent a year working in a hospital in France, concurs. “This has been a great experience,” said Hancock-Cerutti. “It’s fun and it may open a lot of doors.”

In fact, the course has already opened one. Hancock-Cerutti recently joined a program that partners people with anemia and other blood disorders with medical student “buddies.” He’ll be working with a mom and her daughter who emigrated from the Republic of Congo and speak only French. “I’m looking forward to helping them,” he said.