Medical Declensions or Medical Terminology? Search for the Balanced Content in Medical Terminology Instruction
Abstract
The paper outlines a complicated process of implementing innovations in Greek and Latin medical terminology instruction in the General Medicine programme at First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University. The implementations have been performed gradually since about 2015.
They can be characterised by a significant departure from the traditional Latingrammar-oriented model focusing almost on a formal language shape of medical terminology. According to the pragmatic and empirical approach as well as demand for a good semantization of a medical term, the factual content of a medical term became a focus of interest.
The medical terminology teaching based on this principle was supposed to be more useful concerning practical applicability. Besides, there was an expectation of better integration of the subject into natural sciences within a medical curriculum associated with positive attitude changes of students.
However, our assumptions turned out to be wrong. A new standard in teaching and testing was evaluated very negatively by a significant number of students.
Especially, the so-called competence issue was controversial. Students were often arguing that a teacher typically educated in humanities should not enter medical topics.
Apart from that, the negative attitudes may be caused by a specific study strategy adopted by a lot of students that can be characterised as a close focusing on a subject studied at the moment. This can be why they are usually unwilling to learn in a complex and interdisciplinary way.
As a result of these reflections, we concluded that both old grammar-oriented and new realmedical-terminology approaches were unacceptable, both being so extreme. Instead, an effective and well-balanced instructional model must be found exactly between them.
However, on a theoretical basis, these extremes can be used as reference points defining a field for implementing innovations.