Educational website setup for the use of Taiwanese in medicine

• Main Authors: CHANG,SHU-FENG, 張嘉讌
• Other Authors: Hsieh Chang-Fu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/87951025444660884672

碩士 === 國立臺灣藝術大學 === 應用媒體藝術研究所 === 97 === In Dr. LAI Ci-Wan's article, “Examing Patients Using My Mother Tongue”, he quoted from the former superintendent of Changhua Christian Hospital, David Landsborough. Dr. Landsborough once said,” The common weakness in doctors is the arrogance in well-educated people. Expensive instruments are important, but having a merciful, tender and humble heart is even more important.” To put this in practice, Dr. Landsborough spoke fluent Taiwanese. This article was very touching. Doctors not only need to perform physical examinations on patients, they also need to be psychologically close to their patients. Language is an important part in the communication between doctors and patients. Symptom description and history taking is crucial. Only through understanding the patients' problems can one become a good doctor and lower the chances of getting into medical disputes. Dr. Lai Chi-Wan often reminds doctors about respecting patients’ language rights, so patients do not have to worry about communicating with doctors in the hospital. To practise fluent communication between patients and doctors and to prevent misunderstanding due to language is the main reason for designing the course “Medical Taiwanese”. The “Medical Taiwanese” website also assists instructors with teaching classes. Students can use this multimedia technology to practise Taiwanese pronunciation on human organs or common symptoms. Listening and Speaking are very basic to language learning. They require repetitive practice to enhance the memory and to correct the pronunciation. Online learning is very suitable for this purpose. After teaching Medical Taiwanese courses for many years, the creator of this website feels that under current circumstances, young people in Taiwan usually do not have sufficient ability in speaking or understanding Taiwanese. Medical students get limited learning in short class hours. Therefore, to increase learning efficiency and to assist medical care providers communicating with patients in Taiwanese, a multimedia teaching website is necessary. After many considerations, the design of the website is categorized into “Human Organs”, “Disease”, “Symptoms”, “Dental Vocabulary”, “Medical Treatment”, and” The Top Ten Causes of Death”. The website includes more than 800 common vocabularies. Users can hear the Taiwanese pronunciation when they move the cursor onto the vocabulary. There are also human body images to enhance learning. The number of elderly is increasing in Taiwan. Most patients in the hospital are also seniors. People with Min-nan origin makes up 71% of the Taiwanese population. The remaining 15% are Outer province origin, with 12% Hakka origin, and 2% Aboriginal. From this population distribution, we can see that Taiwanese speaking people are the majority, especially the elderly. Communicating with patients using the language they are familiar with can relieve their anxieties and fears. Patients can also feel the empathy from medical care providers. This is especially important for elderly who cannot speak Mandarin. We hope to collect and to preserve medicine-related Taiwanese by setting this website. By using multimedia technology, medical care providers can learn more conveniently and practise repetitively. This makes up for the insufficient class hours. We expect this website can use the efficiency of internet and help medical care providers learn medical Taiwanese.