UrgentiAS, a lexical database for medical students in clinical placements: Architecture, use and evaluation

Publication date: 2011-01-01
Volume: 47 Pages: 191 - 210
ISSN: 978 90 272 0352 6
Publisher: John Benjamins; Amsterdam

Author:

Buyse, Kris
Saver, Eva ; Laffut, An ; Vekemans, Herlinda ; Bhatia, Vijay ; Sánchez Hernández, Purificación ; Pérez-Paredes, Pascual

Keywords:

LSP, Social Sciences, Linguistics, Lexical database, language of Medicine, online resources, terminology

Abstract:

The UrgentiAS database was compiled to meet the needs of Dutch-speaking Belgian medical students attending classes of Medical English/French/Spanish to prepare for their clinical placements abroad. The database provides students with an easy-to-use multilingual medical lexicon, which can help them acquire the vocabulary needed for their placements in obstetrics/gynaecology, pediatrics and internal medicine. Its main purpose is to ensure that the representative vocabulary is presented and acquired in context, both semantically and syntactically. Our corpus analysis of both scientific and popular medical language use resulted in an online database (partially available on paper) consisting of terminology cards with associative contexts, to be used in a setting of blended learning.