MEDICAL FRENCH COURSE ONLINE
Take an online medical French course to speak confidently with your French-speaking patients and colleagues
Who is the online medical French course for?
This personalised and online course with a private tutor is intended for medical doctors, surgeons, specialists, residents or medical students. The medical French course can be adapted to suit the specific needs of paramedical professionals, veterinarians, dentists, pharmacists, therapists or other healthcare workers. This online course, which is tailored to your specific needs in the medical area, allows you to develop your fluency while simulating a wide range of oral interactions in French between a doctor and a patient.
The medical French course online starts from the B1/B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
If you have not yet reached B1 level, you can refer to the menu entitled “General French courses” and consider taking general French classes to reach B1 level before starting the medical French course.
How can your private teacher help you develop your ability to communicate in the medical area?
Each medical French class online is designed to help you develop the four skills : listening, speaking, reading and writing with a special focus on oral skills, which are the skills you most need when practising medicine. During your lessons, your teacher will enable you to improve your oral skills by role-playing common interactions between a doctor and his/her patient and simulating a wide range of other interactions. In order to improve your reading and comprehension skills, you will also study leaflets for medicinal products, medical papers, medical research articles in French, documents on the national health service’s website, and other relevant documents suited to your specific needs and medical speciality.
PROGRAMME OVERVIEW OF MEDICAL FRENCH FOR DOCTORS WHO WISH TO WORK IN A HOSPITAL IN FRANCE OR A FRANCOPHONE COUNTRY.
All the contents of the medical French course can be adapted to your needs and expectations: you can follow the whole course or only part of it according to your aims. The duration of the whole course ranges from 100 to 120 hours, depending on your entry level.
Module 1
Discovering the French medical system, medical specialities and hospital services.
Module 2
Getting to know the health-care team in a hospital.
Module 3
How to take a patient’s medical history in French.
Module 4
Examining a patient and explaining what type of medical examination will be carried out.
Module 5
Giving instructions to a member of the health care team and receiving news about a patient.
Module 6
How to write a clinical observation in French and consult a senior doctor to obtain advice.
Module 7
Collecting the results of biological examinations and understanding medical data.
Module 8
Visiting patients in a department with a para-medical team and presenting a serious medical case to a senior doctor.
Module 9
Prescribing a treatment and explaining a prescription to a patient.
Module 10
Discharging a patient from hospital and writing a medical report.
Module 11
Arranging an appointment for an examination or medical consultation.
Module 12
Welcoming and giving information to a patient’s family.
Module 13
Making an oral presentation during a staff meeting and discussing a medical article.
Module 14
Discussing a patient’s case with a student.
Module 15
Changing shifts with the on-call physician at hospital.
PROGRAMME OVERVIEW FOR DOCTORS WHO WISH TO WORK AS GENERAL PRACTIONERS ON AN INDEPENDENT BASIS
Each medical French lesson and course module can be personalised and adapted to your specific needs.
Module 1
Getting to know the French medical system and the national insurance health system.
Module 2
How to take a patient’s history.
Module 3
Examining a patient.
Module 4
Prescribing a treatment and explaining a prescription to a patient.
Module 5
Writing a letter to a specialist to request his advice.
Module 6
How to answer patient’s questions in French and communicate complex medical matters in layman’s terms.
Module 7
Alerting a patient to the risks of diseases and high-risk behaviours. Formulating recommendations.
PROGRAMME FOR MEDICAL DOCTORS AND HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS WHO WISH TO WORK IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES, PARTICULARLY IN FRENCH-SPEAKING AFRICA
Thanks to this programme based on the specificities of humanitarian medicine, all healthcare professionals will be able to work for French associations such as Doctors Without Borders or Doctors of the World.
Whether you are a medical doctor, a surgeon, an anaesthetist, a nurse or another healthcare worker, each module of the programme is personalised and adapted to the needs of your medical specialty.
The course, taught entirely in French, includes the study of the most common pathologies in tropical medicine and humanitarian medicine. During each medical French class, role-playing is included to simulate the most frequent oral interactions between patients and doctors, as well as medical doctors and their French-speaking colleagues.
This medical French course, specifically adapted to the requirements of medicine in humanitarian contexts, is based on reference documents, in particular the clinical and therapeutic guideline published by the association Doctors Without Borders, which is available on its website. The course is complemented by other useful Doctors Without Borders publications, medical textbooks, videos and other relevant resources.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE MEDICAL FRENCH COURSE
WHAT MEDICAL STUDENTS ARE SAYING
Amanda Hanson, emergency physician, Alberta, Canada.
“I’m an emergency physician in a busy tertiary care emergency department in Canada. I started studying medical French for when I have Francophone patients in the Emergency Department and for when I eventually make the transition to doing international work later in my career.
I found Olivia’s online Medical French courses after looking for an in-person course for years, with little luck. There are very few instructors with an adequate level of medical knowledge to teach what you need to know to interact both with patients and other physicians in a clinical setting.
I have been studying French off and on both in person and online for about 13 years. I have been working with Olivia for almost a year now. I have had many excellent teachers over the years, but Olivia is by far one of the best.
She is professional, organised, flexible and obviously has a great deal of experience in her field. The courses are high yield and allow me to focus on clinical scenarios and medical vocabulary that I encounter most frequently. At the same time, we work on general French grammar that is useful in a clinical setting but also allows me to improve my overall use of the language. I notice that each time I have the opportunity to work with a Francophone patient, my comfort and ability to communicate and understand has improved.
But most of all the courses are fun! If you are working full time and studying on your few free days, it is nice to be able to look forward to the classes – which I certainly do.
Thanks Olivia!!”
Anna Frühauf, medical doctor-PhD student, Berlin, Germany.
« Olivia and I initially started working together a few months ago as I was preparing for a clinical placement in France. Her support in preparing me for this placement was invaluable and we have continued our classes after the internship. Olivia is a natural teacher and is always able to explain different topics in a clear manner using useful examples. For example, whenever we revise grammar rules I forgot or am unsure of, she also makes sure to include exercises and scenarios that are relevant to my work. I particularly enjoy working with her because she has a wide range of ideas and tools focused on medical French in her repertoire, while always being open and flexible to focus on specific needs or requests I might have. For anyone hoping to work on their medical/scientific French, I can 100% recommend working with Olivia! »
Anne Donnelly, family medicine physician and clinical professor, Philadelphia, USA.
“I am a family medicine physician working in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. My practice cares for many patients from other countries, many of whom do not speak English. I have come to realize many of them come from countries where French is often their second language. Having studied French throughout college (over 35 years ago), I have often regretted that I did not keep up with my French because I could use it to better communicate with these patients. It is easy to find a Medical Spanish course but after searching for some time for a Medical French course and not finding one, I found Olivia’s website and reached out to her to see if she could help me.
I was very nervous for our first meeting but she put me at ease right away. She was able to assess my current level and came up with a proposed curriculum to help me meet the goals that we developed together after discussing what I wanted to accomplish.
Olivia is an amazing teacher! She is warm, friendly and encouraging, which was very important to me because I felt so insecure in my French (especially speaking). She knows just how to challenge me to continue my progression toward the successful achievement of my goals. She also has a clear understanding of what skills are needed to be able to communicate in a medical setting. She has produced creative exercises that serve to improve my grammar and my medical vocabulary.
We meet weekly for an hour and start each session just talking to practice French conversation and improve my general vocabulary. We then progress to the material for that class. She will give me things to work on over the week between classes. It could be reviewing something that I need to work on or preparing something new for the next class. She is always available by email for questions. While we have a set day and time for our class, she is flexible and if I have work responsibilities that come up we will adjust the date or time.
I honestly cannot believe how far I have come since starting to work with her less than a year ago. I will be very sad when our time together ends. She has helped me rediscover my love for the French language. I cannot recommend her highly enough.”
Lily Akrapongpisak, emergency physician, Brisbane, Australia.
« I started Olivia’s class to prepare for a clinical placement in the emergency department in New Caledonia. It was very hard for me to find a specific French class tailored to medical professionals, but Olivia was perfect for this. She tailored the classes to exactly what I wanted to practise, which was a lot of role playing where she would pretend to be a patient and I would be the doctor taking her history. We progressed to practising giving instructions when examining patients (e.g. stick out your tongue, walk on the balls of your feet) to enable me to become more fluent and natural at this. After each role play, she would go over the things that I had said that were incorrect, either grammatically or otherwise, which I found very helpful. I also asked to practise giving presentations to her using medical terminology, so she found me French medical terminology resources to help me to prepare to give presentations to my supervisors.
Despite my busy schedule, she always accommodated me and was very flexible and understanding about scheduling, even though I sometimes didn’t know my schedule until a few days beforehand. She was extremely helpful in preparing me for my placement as, without that preparation, I would have been very nervous and ill-prepared.
Now I am in New Caledonia and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to prepare in advance with Olivia. I would highly recommend her to anyone wanting to practise their medical French. »
Lauren Degroot, family doctor, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
“I’m a family doctor on my second set of 10 lessons with Olivia. She is an excellent teacher and personalizes the content to my skill level and needs. It’s clear that she has trained in how to be an effective teacher. Specifically, I like her strategy of repeating my mistakes back to me, and having me try and correct them myself. She is knowledgeable with medical terminology as well. These are the most useful medical french classes I have taken. Highly recommend! ”
YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN READING THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES RELATED TO MEDICAL FRENCH ON MY BLOG
If you would like to improve your use of verb tenses in a medical context, you could read my article that is dedicated to the most common tenses used in medical French.
You could also read my article that is dedicated to the 20 best resources for learning medical French online.