Tag: language

Un chispazo de conexión humana

Agus Morales describes his visit to Faiz, a man from Pakistan, in the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. He describes Faiz’s shock when he speaks to him in Urdu as he had not spoken his native language since he first arrived at the hospital. The story highlights human connections that can grow from shared language, both speaking and being understood in a medical setting. This is a part of a collection that includes visual as well as written narratives regarding experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Useful for medical Spanish classes, well-told story that will resonate with general composition students, good example of a health narrative for humanities-driven upper division courses. Intermediate level, 1-2 pages.

Learning Our Son’s Language

Pediatrician Vidya Bhavani Viswanathan describes learning to communicate with her autistic son by changing her own expectations about what constitutes “communication” and how we can connect with one another without words. Her essay details the course of her son’s loss of language at age 3, and her own struggle to come to terms with this. She writes, “I am a writer, and for me his loss of verbal language was so crushing because words were my primary currency of existing. The way I understood the world was through words, and the way I explained it was through words.” Gradually, however, she learns “how to achieve connection without words” and she gives an eloquent list of examples: “Shared enjoyment of something he was interested in; cuddles and tickles that lead to a fit of giggles; city walks with moments of pause to quietly smile his dazzling smile at the crunchy leaves on the ground, the touch of a rough brick wall, the screech of tires, and the wail of an ambulance.” The story also includes information about treatments, screenings, therapies, and assistive technology, yet the emphasis is not on “fixing” her son, but on ruling out possible medical causes for his loss of language and then learning to appreciate how he communicates and how she can enter and appreciate his world.

The essay could prompt a discussion about autism acceptance, and the importance of presuming that autistic children can connect and communicate when provided with accommodations and supports. It also encourages an appreciation of autistic perspectives and challenges deficit-based stereotypes.

Silenced

Donna Lambers, a maternal/fetal medicine specialist, describes the impact on her medical practice and sense of self when her vocal cords are affected by a thyroidectomy for thyroid cancer. She loses the ability to control vocal inflection. “For instance,” she writes, “I’m unable to raise my voice at the end of a question… I can no longer tease or kid or be sarcastic with my family and friends, because it comes off sounding mean. My voice, having lost its cadences, is unpleasant to hear; and now, when giving perinatal counseling to my patients, I have no way to convey the empathy and emotion I feel for them…” She describes with great insight the many ways this has affected her interactions with patients, their families, and co-workers, as well as the frustrations she experiences.

The story could open up a discussion about the ways in which effective communication requires more than simply clear transmission of information and the taken-for-granted ways that we construct relationships and enact identities through subtle cues. It also speaks to the challenges of this particular non-visible disability.

Worlds Apart

Worlds Apart is a documentary split into four 10-15 minute sections that each focus on a different cross-cultural health experience. We delve into a Muslim man’s journey with stomach cancer when he turned down chemotherapy due to interference with daily prayer. We follow his daughter communicating with the doctor to see if there are any ways that both could be achieved. It also tells the story of a Lao woman with a hole in her heart who can receive surgery to fix it, but whose mother and grandmother are concerned that the scar will inhibit her Buddhist reincarnation. We then see a Black man waiting for a kidney transplant who searches for a nephrologist he can trust and speaks out on the disparity in waiting times for transplants between white and Black patients. Lastly, there is the story of when a Puerto Rican woman with diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression turns to home remedies after her mother’s death, which she believes was caused by taking too much prescription medication.

This documentary showcases narratives that illuminate the limits of Western medicine and expand our ideas of how the American medical system can grow to be more inclusive, equitable, and sensitive. From the intersection between medicine and religion to institutional racism to the clash between types of medicating, Worlds Apart is an excellent resource to learn about a variety of cross-cultural healthcare topics in a person-centered manner. It would fit into more sociological classes like cultural anthropology or a world medicine class, but it could also be useful in a training course for pre-med or med students to broaden their ideas of how to individualize healthcare. It could be shown in class to prompt a discussion or assigned as homework along with a written reflection or essay assignment. View the “Facilitator’s Guide” in the Teaching Materials tab to find more specific ways to integrate it into a course. This documentary is not open access, but it can be viewed on WorldCat, which many institutions have access to.

Worlds Apart Facilitator’s Guide

This is a thorough facilitator’s guide on how to facilitate class discussions on the cross-cultural healthcare documentary Worlds Apart (a detailed summary can be found in the Search for Stories tab). In brief, Worlds Apart is a documentary split into four 10-15 minute sections that each focus on a different cross-cultural health experience, including a Muslim man’s journey with stomach cancer, a Lao woman with a hole in her heart, a Black man waiting for a kidney transplant, and a Puerto Rican woman with diabetes, hypertension, asthma and depression. This documentary showcases narratives that illuminate the limits of Western medicine and expand our ideas of how the American medical system can grow to be more inclusive, equitable, and sensitive.

The facilitator’s guide provides background on the filmmakers and their intentions. It includes suggestions for facilitators such as setting ground rules for discussion and asking students to jot down notes during the documentary. The four-part narrative-driven documentary is summarized, and then each section is broken down in great detail, so even someone who did not watch the film could understand the exact circumstances of each family and individual being featured. After each synopsis we also receive medical background information and a variety of discussion questions specifically tailored to different issues discussed in the stories. Each section has a separate “focus” also outlined, ranging from language barriers to explanatory modules to informed consent to racial/ethnic healthcare disparities to non-adherence to medications. This guide was created “to give health care professionals an engaging experience through which to explore ideas about cross-cultural issues in health care and to learn from the actual experiences of both patients and clinicians,” but could also easily be adapted to a university classroom setting to guide student discussions. The guide does not include any assignments, but any of the issues headlining the discussion topics could work well as research essay prompts.

Historias de la vida real de personas que tienen diabetes durante el embarazo

A woman who was diagnosed with gestational diabetes learns to take this diagnosis seriously because of possible effects on the baby. This story emphasizes the importance of prenatal doctor’s visits and may be best suited for a community group. Medical Spanish courses might talk about health education for Spanish speaking communities.