Shane Murphey – Strategic Organizational Communication
Project Summary
For my senior project I wanted to build something that I thought would be able to help people. I started looking through a variety of issues and ended up settling on an issue proposed to me by a college in Arkansas because of the underlying issue in their simple request. How do they get students, but mostly pre med students, to apply for their language program? Through research the underlying issue became clear. There is a necessity for bilingual doctors due to an increase of language and cultural barriers. I brought up the larger issue and proposed the need to raise awareness of the issue and advocate for it. My proposal was accepted and after many hours of research I took all that I learned and put it into an advocacy packet.
My advocacy packet is titled Language Barriers And Our Medical Practices. The packet covers the increasing immigration rate and the language and cultural barriers that arise due to the increase of those whose second language is English. A language barrier can end up causing a patient to receive improper medical care, and as such there is a need for more doctors who can speak multiple languages. Because there is a need we need to increase awareness of the issue and provide incentives for both medical students and doctors to learn a second language, or give benefits to those who already can.
Through the research and opportunities I had to interview professionals in the medical field I learned a lot about this issue. I hope through my project I can raise more awareness for this issue and help people realize a need for change.