Towards a communication-focused ESP course for nursing students in building partnership with patients: A needs analysis

With the growing popularity of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) nursing courses worldwide, considerable work has gone to identifying the English language learning needs of nurses and nursing students, with their perceptions well documented. However, needs analyses grounded in students' communicative behaviors in performing nursing tasks are still in their fledging stage. This study offers an ethnographic discourse analytical account of role-play conversations collected from 100 college nursing students in China. It explores nursing students' communicative practices by identifying the communication patterns that students adopt in a simulated scenario of giving a patient an injection. Findings show students' awareness of patients’ concern and preferences, and their informational skills such as giving instructions, negotiating treatment options, and explaining medical procedures. Yet students demonstrate a great reliance on prescribed phraseology, struggling to adjust their nursing plan based on differing patient needs. This study sheds light on the specificity of ESP nursing courses and the challenges complicated by the changing nature of the global healthcare landscape, where patient-centered care is prioritized. It also provides implications for ESP curriculum development and highlights the importance of learner-centered tailor-made language instruction.