CHEESE – Time to Have Fun with English

CHEESE – Time to Have Fun with English 

By Azzahra Virda R & Desi Ayu Rahmadiani, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta, CIMSA ISMKI Indonesia 

English and medicine are two things unseparated. The development of medicine will be explained using English to reach all professionals or viewers around the world and give an update about medical information. For medical school, students get used to reading books or journals in English, because many sources come from the western countries. Moreover, the ease of visiting places makes it easier for a doctor to get a foreign patient. Therefore, a doctor should have the skill to understand English and communicate in English. Bringing the idea to increase English communication skills of medical students in the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, SCOPE CIMSA FK UIN SH held a project called CHEESE (Cheers with English).

CHEESE was held in four interventions, starting from October 7^th 2019 until November 13th 2019. The goal of this event was to improve first-year medical students on their history-taking skills, aiming to improve their English during the process. On the first intervention, the students were taught by Dr. Bisatyo Mardjikoen, Sp.OT, one of the lecturers of the Faculty of Medicine UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, about the basics of history-taking and what questions should the participants ask according to the illness their future patient has. The lesson was delivered through a theoretical presentation. After that, the role-play was held with the ones cast as the patients in the role-play being foreign people, native speakers, and acting as if they are sick, while the students were trained how to ask questions properly in English.

The same method was applied to the rest of the interventions. As for the second interventions, Dr. Bisatyo Mardjikoen, Sp.OT gave the students a lesson about how to communicate with patients effectively and what to ask the patient regarding their past medical history. After one hour of lectures, the students were divided into two groups and started to practice what they have been taught with the native speakers.

The third intervention was held on November 6^th 2019. In this intervention, the students learned about how to ask the patients about their family’s medical history and they were given a chance to practice how to ask patient’s family medical history through role-play with native speakers.

On the last interventions, Dr. Bisatyo Mardjikoen Sp.OT gave the students a lesson on asking the patient about their habits related to their health issues. As usual, after the lesson, they were given a chance to practice their history-taking skills in English through role-play with native speakers, but this time they did the practice one-on-one with the native speakers about present history, past medical history, family and social history.

From this event, we hope students could improve their history-taking skills and realize that mastering a language such as English is important to become a professional and competent doctor in the future.