Take Care: Communicating in English with Health Care Workers

A high level of communicative skills are essential and expected for health care workers. Take Care is designed to give readers the strategies and tools to build, maintain, and repair communication within interactions that take place in health care settings. It is designed for students who are enrolled in health care training as well as nurses or health care workers who are already on the job but may want to improve their English. This text is designed to provide readers with a firm grasp of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies for more successful interactions. It will also help readers develop strategic competence by asking them to practice formulaic phrases needed to get things done. Carefully selected situations will also help readers to understand some of the social situations health care workers need to prepare for, such as apologizing, expressing condolences, or giving advice.

Take Care breaks each unit into the following sections to teach readers new skills:

• Listening for Language
• Dialogue
• Vocabulary
• Communication Strategy
• Pronunciation
• Dialogue Review
• Role Plays
• End-of-Unit Discussion
• Culture Point

This revised edition is updated to include information about pandemics, vaccines, and other medical developments. Audio files for the listening activities are available online.

Nina Ito is the Former Academic Coordinator of the California State University, Long Beach’s American Language Institute and previously taught at the University of Southern California’s International Academy.

Christopher Mefford is the Director of Study Abroad @ The Beach at the California State University, Long Beach and Associate Professor of ESL at Coastline Community College.