Kochi: Do you think the new-age Malayali doctors are struggling to communicate, especially in their mother tongue?
At least the Kerala University of Health Sciences thinks so.
Hence the varsity is teaming up with the Malayalam University to introduce a Malayalam communication course for various healthcare students, including MBBS and BDS, to help them have proper communication skills to connect to patients and relatives.
“The key elements of healthcare are compassion, commitment and communication which the doctors and paramedical staff should have for delivering proper care, and if they fail to make proper communication with the patients and their relatives, they will not be able to gather details and give the right prescription and advice. Since Malayalam is our mother tongue, the health professionals need to have a sound base in the communication aspect of the language to relate to majority of the patients. Thus we hit on the idea,” said KUHS Vice-Chancellor Dr K. Mohandas.
He has already held discussions in this regard with the Malayalam University Vice-Chancellor K. Jayakumar. “During our times, we acquired these skills while doing house surgency. But nowadays majority of the students don’t get time as they are engrossed in the study for PG courses,” Dr Mohandas said.
It is also pointed out that doctors of previous generations belonged to village surroundings and schools while the new generations are products of English-medium schools and are not well-versed in local dialects.
