Multilingual education: medical interns perceptions regarding the usefulness of non-mother tongue communications skills taught during the undergraduate curriculum.

Background: This paper investigates the perceptions of medical interns regarding the usefulness of non-mother tongue communication skills taught during the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In 2003, the university decided to incorporate Afrikaans and IsiXhosa communication skills into the new MBChB curriculum in order to meet the Faculty of Health Sciences goals to promote quality and equity in healthcare, and to prepare graduating health practitioners for multilingual communities where they would be serving. Despite annual internal evaluations and reviews of the languages courses, the usefulness, if any, of the additional languages in the working clinical environment had not been determined.

The lay descriptors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the Western Cape province, South Africa.

Introduction: Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) is a time-sensitive emergency requiring prompt identification and emergency care to reduce morbidity and mortality. The first step in managing OHCA is rapid identification by the emergency dispatch centre. Identification of these patients remains challenging in South Africa due to multiple languages and widely differing levels of education.

Students' perceptions of the effectiveness of additional language tuition in the University of Cape Town MBChB programme: A descriptive cross-sectional study.

Background: Language barriers between doctors and patients have been shown globally to negatively affect the quality of health care and infringe on basic patient rights. In response to these challenges, the Division of Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT) integrated career-oriented Afrikaans and Xhosa communication skills classes into the MBChB degree programme in 2003.

Aim: To measure students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the language communication skills classes in creating multilingual medical practitioners in the South African context and compare these perceptions between the Afrikaans and Xhosa courses.

Building freeways: piloting communication skills in additional languages to health service personnel in Cape Town, South Africa.

Background: This study reflects on the development and teaching of communication skills courses in additional national languages to health care staff within two primary health care facilities in Cape Town, South Africa. These courses were aimed at addressing the language disparities that recent research has identified globally between patients and health care staff. Communication skills courses were offered to staff at two Metropolitan District Health Services clinics to strengthen patient access to health care services.