CASE STUDY: English Pronunciation Training for a Doctor

This case study explains how Speechaus Clinic provided detailed support to a doctor wanting to enhance their communication and improve intelligibility when interacting with hospital patients, caregivers and colleagues.

The Problem

A 35-year-old male general practitioner, Liu, was experiencing ongoing problems with his communication and intelligibility when interacting with patients. Liu said he “feels very anxious giving medical information to my patients and their families because my speech is unclear.” He also reported that he was “tired of not being understood clearly” and outlined concerns regarding his ability to achieve career progression due to communication barriers.

Liu enrolled in Your Personalised English Pronunciation Audit, where he had the opportunity to submit detailed recordings and attend an online personalised recommendation session where he received a clear outline of his Pronunciation Success plan – a guide on achieving increased clarity and confidence when speaking at work.

The clinician noted several barriers to clear communication for the general practitioner.

These included:

Liu then worked with our team in 15 tailored sessions.

Each session was tailored to ensure successful pragmatic and functional communication. Liu’s personalised program strongly emphasised high-frequency medical vocabulary and expressions to enhance the transfer of clinical goals to daily communication activities.

Liu’s program encompassed the following aspects to address his needs as a GP:

Liu wanted to see his progress at the end of his program so decided to purchase a follow-up post-treatment assessment which revealed improved intelligibility, vowel and consonant accuracy and speech features that revealed heightened English prosody and intonation compared to the initial diagnostic assessment. Liu reported he had received “positive feedback about my communication from my colleagues… I also am seldom asked to repeat myself.” He confirmed that he experienced reduced anxiety when presenting at conferences and reported that “I can now manage my speech rate and pronunciation effectively so that I no longer feel as anxious when I communicate in English.”