Medical Role-Play Kit

About This Activity

Overview

Our Medical Role-Play Kit includes everything needed for a teacher to organize realistic medical diagnosis role-play activities in a classroom environment.

With these materials, students can participate successfully in simple medical role-play interactions after memorizing about 27 core vocabulary words.

Role-play activities are a type of communication practice exercise used regularly under the communicative language teaching (CLT) methodology as one of six common classroom activity types.

Important Note: Two decks of the included Medical Symptom Cards can also be used to play a deduction card game as well. It is recommended to have students with lower level English speaking skills first play the deduction card game to learn the included vocabulary words and several key sentences / sentence patterns before being introduced to this more complex medical role-play activity.

Activity Presentation Phase Instructions

Fast-Food Printable Example

Diagnostic Table (With Key)

Everything needed to diagnosis a patient based on the symptoms present, symptoms duration (minutes, hours, or days), and type of symptoms onset (suddenly or gradually)

Fast-Food Printable Example

Diagnostic Table (Without Key) x2

Diagnostic tables without a key for the symptom icons -- these diagnostic tables will encourage activity participants to memorize all of the included symptom vocabulary words

Fast-Food Printable Example

Medical Symptom Cards

The above image shows 9 of the 18 available medical symptom cards with a list of related symptoms that can be provided to patients as part of this medical role-play activity

Download Printable Materials

How To Use

Groups: These materials are best used for pair role-play. One student can play the role of 'patient' and the other 'doctor.'

Materials:

One Diagnostic Table for each partner-pair.
One set of Medical Symptom Cards per 18 or fewer partner-pairs. (If there are more than 18 partner-pairs participating in the activity, you'll need a second set of Medical Symptom Cards.)

Time / Game Round: 1-3 minutes

The doctor should ask the patient questions that allow them to narrow down which diseases the patient could potentially have based on which symptoms they have, how long they have had the symptoms, and the nature of the onset of the symptoms. (See suggested questions near the bottom of this page.)
The patient will reply to the doctor's questions based on the information on the Medical Symptoms Card they randomly choose from the 18 available cards.
The doctor can record notes on a Diagnostic Table and systematically reduce the possible diseases down to between 1-3 based on the patient's responses.

How To Play

Words to Learn Before Playing

The Core Vocabulary Words listed below are all words that students should learn BEFORE playing this game. Students will only need to learn the words listed for a specific set of cards to play this game with that set of cards.

Core Vocabulary Words Used in Activity
Materials Set A		body-aches, cold-chills, day, diarrhea, dizziness, ear-ache, fever, gradually, headache, high-temperature, hour, itchy-skin, minute, nausea, nosebleed, pain, rash, reduced-appetite, runny-nose, shortness-of-breath, sneezing, sore-throat, stomache-ache, suddenly, tired, trouble-hearing, vomiting

Words to Learn While Playing

The following words will be used for this role-play activity. However, these words don't need to be pre-taught. These words can and should be learned WHILE participating in the role-play activity.

Vocabulary Best Learned In Context
Recommended Vocabulary		a/an, are, been, begin, better, confirm, diagnosis, did, do, doctor, experiencing, feel, feeling, for, get, had, have, I, lots, medicine, more, of, recommend, rest, symptoms, take, tests, thank, that, the, this, to, until, we, welcome, you

Sentence Patterns to Use While Playing

The following sentences and sentence patterns are recommended for use while playing this game. The best way to teach these sentences, is to use them in context while introducing the game and demonstrating how to play it.

Standard Sentences and Sentence Patterns

Have you had (a) _________________?

Yes, I have. / No, I haven't.

Have you been feeling tired?

Have you been vomiting?

Have you been experiencing symptoms for _________________ minutes?

Have you been experiencing symptoms for _________________ hours?

Have you been experiencing symptoms for _________________ days?

Did the symptoms begin gradually?

Did the symptoms begin suddenly?

Yes, they did. / No, they didn't.

I think you have (a) _________________.

I think you have either (a) _________________ or (a) _________________.

I think you have either (a) _________________, (a) _________________, or _________________.

I recommend that we do more tests to confirm this diagnosis.

(For asthma and seasonal allergies.)

I recommend that you take some medicine and get lots of rest until you feel better.

(For all diseases other than asthma and seasonal allergies.)

Thank you, doctor.

You're welcome.

Vocabulary Icons

The following icons are used to represent vocabulary words on the included set of 18 Medical Symptom Cards. You'll need to teach your students the meaning of each icon before they'll be able to successfully participate in this activity.

Note: This is a good opportunity for English language learners to be exposed to grammar rule about the articles a/an being used to preceed singular nouns, but not plural nouns.