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URMC » School of Medicine and Dentistry » Medical Humanities » Pathways » Deaf Health

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  • Deaf Health
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Pathway Components

Students in this Pathway are required to complete

Year 1 and 2

Three DHP Medical Humanities Seminars (2 hours a week for 8 weeks) focusing on Deaf health, language, and culture in total:

• DHP Part 1: An Introduction to Deaf Language and Culture (Spring 1st Year Seminar)
• DHP Part 2: Immersion into Deaf Language and Culture (Fall 2nd Year Seminar)
• DHP Part 3: Medical Experience in Deaf Language and Culture (Fall 2nd Year Seminar)

Evaluation of Medical/Clinical Language skills (A) (formative)

At the end of DHP Part 3, each student is evaluated on their ASL in two clinical situations through an OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Exam) with two Deaf Standardized Patients. The interviews ( H & P) will be recorded and reviewed with the students and SPs. Each student will receive information about their individual level competency including ding areas of strength, and areas requiring further training, and any concerns regarding ASL skills.

Year 3 and 4

Four weeks (total) of electives relating to Deaf issues in collaboration with the Deaf community (not all 4 weeks need to be in one area)

• Interpreting Observership: students work with Strong Memorial Hospital’s ASL Interpreters seeing patients in a variety of settings, from psychiatric small groups, to emergency room visits, to routine office visits.
• Research: students identify a topic related to Deaf Health, and carry out a research project supervised by clinician and other appropriate faculty.
• Community Education: students develop and implement an educational healthcare module for a specific Deaf population ( i.e. a tour for Deaf children in the hospital, talks to Deaf geriatric patients about age-related concerns, discussions with Deaf teens about contraception, etc., in collaboration with the American Sign Language Program on the River Campus and/or the Rochester School for the Deaf).
• Clinical Experience: students work with physicians who treat Deaf patients to develop clinical and cultural skills and knowledge about interactions with Deaf patients.
• Curriculum Design: students interested in serving as student co-ordinator for the Pathway will maintain and develop the syllabus of the DHP seminars in Years 1 and 2 with the Seminar Instructors, work with the Deaf Health Advisory committee and other student co-ordinators, and with Deaf educators and community organizations in Rochester to sustain existing and develop new activities and partnerships for the Pathway.

A supervised project of 10 – 15 pages or equivalent, based on work done in Deaf electives, must be completed and submitted by February 1 of final year.

Language Proficency: Student Requests to place out of Part I or Part II

The language learning in the three DHP seminars is only one part of the seminar content; there are cultural and medical/clinical components integrated into each weekly session during the second hour, with a focus on the health needs, beliefs, and services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the Rochester area. The three part seminar design is intended to provide a stepwise integrated curriculum so that Part II builds on the skills and discussions about culture and health issues from Part I, and so on. Although some students may have a solid and even advanced proficiency in ASL, the Part II and Part III seminars increasingly focus on medical and clinical vocabulary, symptom descriptors, etc., that may not be familiar . For these reasons, students with exceptional language skills my request to be exempted from the language learning components of Part I and/or II of the seminars, but must still attend the seminars for the culture and healthcare segments in each session.

Students who believe that they possess exceptional language skills, will arrange to meet with the Course Director and the Seminar Instructor during or after the Pathway Informational Session in October/early November of first year for permission to do so.

Students who are allowed an exemption from the Language component, will still need to attend the DHP seminars Part I, and Part II for the culture and healthcare components (in the second hour of the seminar)

In addition, language exempted students must also take a different Medical Humanities seminar of their choice, during the January – March session in order to complete the Medical Humanities core course requirement to take one full seminar in Year 1 and one full seminar in Year 2.

Alternatively, language exempted students can opt to remain in the DHP seminar and participate as a Teaching Assistant to the Instructor to share their knowledge and skills with other Pathway students.