This seminar course provides an opportunity for senior undergraduates to apply their expertise in Medical Terminology to preliminary work on a wide variety of research projects in the largely unexplored field of medical miscommunication. The information and skills learned in this course will enable students to take an interdisciplinary approach to an emerging and complex set of problems which medical professionals themselves are not currently being trained to deal with. To this end, the course requires each student to do a research project on a specific problem arising from a paradox inherent in contemporary Western medicine: while knowledge of traditional medical terminology is still required for medical professionals (in fact, its use is ever-expanding), it is now being used by a third and even fourth generation of people who don't understand the word-parts and principles on which this terminology is based. More pragmatically, the course will prepare students to take a lead in dealing with this new and poorly understood category of potential medical error: those which arise from failures of accurate communication between health care professionals, failures with potentially serious consequences to health care in general, and to patients in particular. Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hoursPrerequisite(s): CLAS 203 and 75 credit units of university courses; or permission of the instructor.
This seminar course provides an opportunity for senior undergraduates to apply their expertise in Medical Terminology to preliminary work on a wide variety of research projects in the largely unexplored field of medical miscommunication. The information and skills learned in this course will enable students to take an interdisciplinary approach to an emerging and complex set of problems which medical professionals themselves are not currently being trained to deal with. To this end, the course requires each student to do a research project on a specific problem arising from a paradox inherent in contemporary Western medicine: while knowledge of traditional medical terminology is still required for medical professionals (in fact, its use is ever-expanding), it is now being used by a third and even fourth generation of people who don't understand the word-parts and principles on which this terminology is based. More pragmatically, the course will prepare students to take a lead in dealing with this new and poorly understood category of potential medical error: those which arise from failures of accurate communication between health care professionals, failures with potentially serious consequences to health care in general, and to patients in particular. Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hoursPrerequisite(s): CLAS 203 and 75 credit units of university courses; or permission of the instructor.
