Identifying the needs of students with English-as-an-additional-language for pharmacist-patient counselling: an interdisciplinary research approach

Registration boards for most health practitioners require graduates to demonstrate high levels of professional communication. University curricula have responded to include preparation of graduates to meet this requirement. In most cases, the preparation results in successful registration, however some students, particularly those who have English as an additional language (EAL), find the challenges difficult and often seek additional support of extra-curricular practice classes with Language and Learning Advisers. For professional language development classes to be effective, however, requires authentic experiences and resources which are not readily available. This paper details interdisciplinary research undertaken to identify the nature and features of authentic pharmacy workplace discourse for developing effective extra-curricular materials to enhance professional communication for EAL students' pharmacist-patient counselling. The comprehensive needs analysis focused on target language use in pharmacist-patient interactions. The project was framed by an interactional sociolinguistic approach developed by Roberts & Sarangi (2005) which enables a top-down examination of the communicative contexts and texts of professional settings. The findings of the investigation identified a number of specific areas of language usage peculiar to pharmacist-patient counselling as well as key areas of language development to be included in extra-curricular classes for EAL pharmacy students. The outcomes of the project indicate possible wider application of the interdisciplinary approach for identifying language development needs of EAL students preparing for other health professions.