Clinical communication: Addressing the needs of international postgraduate physiotherapy students

Abstract

International students comprise a significant proportion of the student body at a number of Australian universities. Many of these international students are from non-English-speaking backgrounds coming principally from South East Asia. Such students face problems adapting to the Australian national culture and the different teaching and learning styles used in Australian universities. These problems are often more acute for postgraduate students, who may be resident in Australia for less than 1 year. This paper describes a research project designed to gain insights into the communication needs of international postgraduate physiotherapy students and the subsequent development and evaluation of a subject-specific unit addressing those communication needs.