The Department of Ghanaian Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cape Coast has made a call to stakeholders to look at the re-examination of the Sciences curriculum by incorporating indigenous Ghanaian languages into the training of health professionals in the country.
This, the Department believes, will help improve communication between health professionals and their patients.
The call was made at a public lecture held at the University of Cape Coast on Monday, February 21, to commemorate International Mother Language Day which aimed at encouraging other institutions to follow UCC’s lead in incorporating indigenous language proficiency into health professional training.
According to a senior lecturer at the Department of Ghanaian Languages and Linguistics, Dr. Emmanuel Amo Ofori, poor communication between health professionals and their patients has resulted in major implications such as misdiagnosis and wrong prescriptions.
“… You go to the hospital and you tell the doctor “MEY3MEMU SANFROSANFRO ME” (I have some weird feelings in my stomach), how will the doctor understand this if he is not a native Akan speaker? So language to the medic is a big challenge,” he indicated.
He, therefore, called for a national policy that will ensure a bit of an indigenous language is integrated into the curriculum of every medical school thereby enabling medical doctor trainees to read proficiency in Fante language
Some participants at the lecture shared their impressions on the initiative of the department at ensuring better health service provision in the country with ATLFMNEWS.
One of them said “I am health personnel and sometimes, you know the challenges when someone comes and mentions a terminology that you are not aware of. So this will help us so that we can give better diagnoses and understand our patients very well. I will encourage that we all help so it becomes part of our training”
I am very excited about this program because it is focused on a critical institution which is the medical institution where language is used as a technology and as a medical symptom and so I’m happy they have emphasized the salience and importance of using the mother tongue language in developing health care interactions and professionals”, said another.
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Source: Emmanuella Ama Gyamfi & Miriam Bosomprah/ATLFMNEWS
