AELFE 2024: Isabel Herrando explore the dissemination of medical research

Our member Dr. Isabel Herrando Rodrigo participated in the 22nd AELFE conference. This year the event was given the title “Challenges of LSP teaching and research in the era of the language technological revolution”, and it was celebrated as a hybrid event at the Institute of Languages for Specific Purposes of the Semmelweis University (Hungary) on the 6th and 7th of September 2024.

In her presentation, titled “Knowledge transfer instruction for disseminating medical research internationally”, Isabel explored a set of experiences addressed to medical professionals at a University Hospital in Spain.  She discussed how results from these ethnographically-informed experiences demonstrate that collaborating with experts when designing courses can effectively develop professionals’ communicative competence.

The abstract of her talk can be consulted as follows:

Knowledge transfer instruction for disseminating medical research internationally
This presentation focuses on the design and implementation of a set of experiences addressed to medical professionals at a University Hospital in Spain based on our ESP, EAP and ERPP research results (Herrando, Mur & Lorés, 2012).
We firstly designed three seminars to urology practitioners and interns who were urged to present their clinical research in the 2020 European and World conference of Urology by means of digital posters (Herrando & Lorés, 2019). Secondly, once the COVID health crisis allowed us to resume our activity at hospitals, we designed a one-day seminar funded by a pharmaceutical house specialized in Hematology in April 2023 (Deepening in ph- Myeloproliferative Neoplasms Communication challenges). With the latest published research on their pharmaceutical results, we worked on the main academic and generic features of Research Articles published on digital journals. Thirdly, with our local Government Health Service, we designed a four-week formative course based on the different practices medical personnel need to disseminate medical research internationally (Professional Communicative Competence: Preparation of international scientific papers and articles and further communicative challenges) May 2023.
Through the design and administration of questionnaires (via Google forms and Socrative), focus interviews and onsite observations a qualitative and quantitate study of the implementation of the syllabus design was taken.
In line with previous research (Gil, 2023), our ethnographically-informed results convey that collaborating with practitioners and medical experts to design courses based on previous linguistic and generic research effectively contribute to enhance the communicative competence of professionals. In addition, we could also conclude that medical practitioners still find conference papers, poster presentations and research articles as the main practices to disseminate medical knowledge (Jacobs, 2019).
References:
Gil, V. (2023). Forging Learning Journeys: Proposal and Analysis of a Model for Teacher Training in an English as a Foreign Language Context. [PhD Thesis Unpublished]. Universidad de Zaragoza. Spain.
Herrando, I. & Lorés, R. (2019). Emerging trends in teaching professional communication practices: Using online resources for the design and implementation of seminars for trainee doctors. CLAVIER 2019. Pisa (Italy) 28th & 29th November 2019.
Herrando,I., Mur, P. & Lorés, R. (2012). Academic English for Health Science. Prensas Universitarias.
Jacobs, G. (2019). Unwriteable discourse? Co-crafting the language of science news. In Krispin Thorlow (ed.) The Business of Words (pp. 53-66). Routledge.