Are you ready to increase your confidence at work and build a career you love?
As the number of casual visitors and health tourists rises, you’re increasingly finding yourself treating patients who don’t speak English, leaving you to rely on translation apps, hand gestures, or desperately hoping someone else in the department speaks English.
You’ve always prided yourself on the standard of care you provide to patients, and you worry that a language barrier will cause a serious medical error or injury to a patient.
With years of healthcare service under your belt, you wish your English reflected your professional expertise.
You’d love to try working in a renowned research hospital in Scandinavia or the USA, plus more and more conferences in your speciality are being held in English, and you’re feeling pressurised to use a language you can barely remember from your school days.
You need to learn some specialist vocabulary that actually fits your needs, the language learning resources on the market are multiplying like bacteria, and you have no idea which ones to choose, or if they will fit your specialist needs.
What could a better grasp of English healthcare communications do for your career?
how would it feel to...
transform generic statements like “the book is on the table” into descriptions of patient positioning or disease features on an x-ray.?
be able to chat with English-speaking colleagues at the next conference in your speciality?
realise you can understand an English-speaking patient's signs and symptoms rather than panicking you might miss something?
stand in an overseas conference hall giving a presentation on the latest developments in your field to an audience of influential peers.?
My Galvanise! programme
Galvanise! is an intensive speaking programme giving Italian healthcare professionals with elementary English skills plenty of opportunities to revise and consolidate the basic language and soft skills required in a healthcare setting, allowing them to overcome chronic communication hurdles and express themselves clearly and accurately with patients and colleagues.
A three-month small group programme offering flexible weekly speaking sessions, recorded audio lessons, specialist vocabulary and plenty of personalised feedback.
Galvanise!
What does the programme look like?
Here's what you'll get:
Weekly speaking sessions
Small groups
Record yourself!
The programme focuses exclusively on speaking. Weekly 90-minute sessions take you through typical healthcare communication tasks, such as taking patient histories, explaining examination procedures, giving results and breaking bad news.
Groups are deliberately kept small (maximum 8 participants) to maximise speaking time, while pair work extends speaking time even further.
Recording yourself speaking is a great way to improve your speaking skills. You'll have the option of recording your responses to audio prompts for personalised feedback.
Specialist vocabulary
Bite-sized audio
Soft skills
While all medical specialities share a certain amounnt of anatomical and physiological terminology, each has their own very specialised vocabulary. I'll help you develop yours, giving you specialist language you can actually use.
Online community
The programme includes a library of audio recordings on healthcare-related topics, tailored to your language level, that you can listen to on-the-go. The recordings come with transcripts and optional exercises for further speaking practice.
You will also have access to an online Facebook community where you can connect with others on the course for support, exchange ideas and keep up with what's new in the world of healthcare communications.
Soft skills are just as important as clear communication, and we'll look at aspects such as showing empathy, reassuring patients, active listening and intercultural competence.
Why the name Galvanise?
The word galvanise comes from Italian physician Luigi Galvani, pioneer in the field of electrophysiology, who...
Galvani was born in Bologna, where I live and where I gained my nursing degree.
Galvanise (/ˈɡalvənʌɪz/) means to spur or incite someone into taking action, and I hope my programme will spur my students into improving their healthcare communication skills and building a career they love.
Portrait of Luigi Galvani by an unknown artist,
Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
And the frog logo?
Frogs were the subjects of Galvani's pioneering experiments into what he called "animal electricity".
But frogs are also incredibly resilient, adaptive and vocal.