Breaking the Silence: A Consistent Paradox?

Dr. Ismail conducts a sign language course in the DTS conference room

Paradoxes are often remote from reality, but in the sign language class given at the Diana Tamari Sabbagh Building every other week, one paradox is not so inconsistent after all. In a seemingly quiet classroom, communication with gestures and mimics, even though not audible, breeds an exciting interaction among the students and their sign language instructor, Dr. Hussein Ismail, director of the Learning Center of the Deaf in Baabda and a graduate of Gallaudet University in the United States.

The Standing Committee on Medical Education and the Lebanese Medical Students International Committee organized a Lebanese sign language course, entitled Breaking the Silence, that aims at promoting the use of the Lebanese sign language in a society where the deaf face great difficulties in hospitals, owing to lack of proper communication with the rest of the medical staff. The course introduces Lebanon's future doctors to the most effective approach to communicate with an important population of patients.

There are an estimated 12,000 deaf people in Lebanon, one per thousand of which have suffered from profound sensorineural deafness since childhood, yet sign language is only the fifth official language in Lebanon. To alleviate that ordeal, AUB students taking this course "hope to increase awareness at AUBMC of the problems the deaf population in Lebanon face," says Charbel Khoury, third-year medical student at AUB and the national officer on the Medical Education Lebanese Medical Students International Committee.

Khoury is one of 45 AUB students, most of whom are medical students, taking the four-month course, which, not only was given for the first time starting January 8, but also entitles its participants to an official certificate after completing forty-two and a half hours of learning.

There are three sections of Breaking the Silence, each of which accommodates fifteen students. The small number of students allows for better and more elaborate communication between Dr. Ismail and each group. The pedagogy Dr. Ismail uses is one followed in some European countries, such as in Poland and Italy.

Khoury's personal and medical experiences were enriched tremendously after taking the course. "Communicating with the deaf at the hospital can be very frustrating for both the patient and the doctor. I was fortunate once to be able to communicate with a deaf patient about her pregnancy. The diagnosis ran smoothly or at least better than it would have, had I not known sign language," says Khoury.

"After completing the course, we will have learned enough to get by and communicate at an elementary level with the patients, who are not only afraid of the disease but afraid that nobody will understand them. Most of what they try to communicate can be lost in bad translation… I think this course is a breakthrough at AUB," he added.