1. Bottom-up education

These courses are intended for all students with the goal of “training medical professionals with an English proficiency necessary for international standardization and international coordination of medical care”. The goal of all students is to complete the achievements shown in blue above, in Figure 2, by graduation.

Global Communication Workshop

This all-English workshop, to discuss global medical issues, is conducted in the spring semester; targeted at first-year students, while incorporating the knowledge of foreign graduate students from various departments. Students are assigned a role, such as country official, an NGO or the United Nations, and negotiate in English to try and solve a problem common to all parties. Through this exercise students can learn the complexity of global medical problems, their own English proficiency, and recognize the need for interpersonal and critical thinking skills. Participation is required for students wanting to take advantage of study abroad opportunities in the future, but optional for all other students.

English Education (curricular): Global Communication

In liberal arts and professional English education programs, we aim to coordinate and integrate competencies and learning methods to provide seamless language learning opportunities. In the case of Global Communication, the goal is not just brushing up one’s English, but gaining English proficiency in the academic scene, becoming familiar with global medical and healthcare issues, and targeting acquisition of critical thinking skills. Through small group discussions, students will learn to analyze articles, evaluate oral presentations, and practice post-presentation question and answer sessions. Based on such goals, we decided to name the course “Global Communications (Global Communication for Healthcare Professionals)”, rather than “◯◯ English”. In addition, to enhance the student’s learning effect as much as possible, we try to keep a small student to native-level English instructor ratio.

English Education Augmentation (curricular): Steps toward increasing global preparedness in all subjects

Based on the medical university’s mission to train medical professionals who will contribute to promoting better health for all, specialized courses in the university are basically conducted in Japanese. However, from the aspect of developing “medical professionals with an adequate English proficiency required for international standardization and coordination of medical care” there is a need to learn English medical terminology and pronunciation. Therefore, acquisition of medical terminology is tested in the inter-professional language course, Global Communication. In addition, ten percent of the final exams in specialized medical and dentistry courses will be conducted in English.

English Education (extracurricular)

Private lessons, and small class size lessons will be provided for students who wish to make an additional effort to improve their general English proficiency.
It is to be noted that immediately after these learning opportunities they will be required to take a TOEFL exam to measure the effectiveness of their learning. Moreover, students who take advantage of these learning opportunities are expected to exhibit leadership to enhance the learning effect of the other students in the regular course subject “Global Communications”.

Overseas Study Opportunities

“Project Semester” in fourth year of Medical School:
provides study participants the opportunity of five months research time at Imperial College London, UK.

Sixth year of Medical School:
provides clinical training opportunities in the Harvard-based medical institutions. Students will be screened based on the following requirements: good scholastic attitude and academic performance, set English standards (TOEFL iBT 100). Other possibilities include partner schools, Seoul National University in Korea, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, and Australia National University in Australia. For further clinical practice, we have joined a university networking organization run by the American Medical Association named Global Health Learning Opportunities (GHLO), in order to provide medical learning opportunities on a global scale. In addition to these, study abroad opportunities are available in various forms to students of all faculties.

2. Student/Teacher Ratio

For Japan to continue being “a mature nation that foster’s global leaders which play a central role in continuing to support the world in such areas as life science research and international health, health policy and medical tourism, and medical industries like other major industrialized countries” achievement of the above mentioned competencies, and effectively taking advantage of the learning opportunities offered is required.

Also, even after graduation, you must have a mechanism to support your career vision, and help you to keep an eye on your future goals. Therefore, as shown in green in Figure 2, we have established a new program “Health Sciences Leadership Program” (HSLP), which spans from the second semester of first year until graduation. From all departments, each year a total of approximately 20 students whose scholastic attitude is good, aspirations are high, and who meet the set English TOEFL criteria will be selected. This course will be taken in addition to the university undergraduate education. Also, as a member of such a community students can stimulate and support each other towards reaching their long-term goals on the road to becoming global leaders.