BTS 1st Intervention
(Breaking The Silence)
SCOME CIMSA UI
FKUI students have a specific set of academic schedules and are not able to freely take subjects from another faculty. However, understanding sign language as a doctor can be essential in eliminating the communication barrier between patient and doctor. Out of 106 FKUI students assessed, the average score of a questionnaire about sign language knowledge is 3.26, which is considered low. Therefore, sign language training for FKUI students is needed so they can communicate with deaf patients in the clinical year. This year, we held a community development about sign language, Breaking The Silence (BTS).
The objective of BTS is to train the organizing committee, who is a medical student, in understanding sign language, communicate in accordance to deaf culture by understanding deaf culture, organizing a good community development activity with the effort to increase medical student awareness about sign language and deaf culture, and improving FKUI student skill in understanding sign language that is expected to be useful for effective communication with people with hard of hearing as a patient at healthcare service in the clinical year.
BTS, an abbreviation for Breaking The Silence, is a community development held by SCOME CIMSA UI. The goal of this program is to increase the knowledge of FKUI student sign language. We held our first intervention on Saturday, September 18th, 2021 via an online meeting, Zoom. On our first intervention, we educate our target community, FKUI students, about introduction to sign language.
The first intervention started at 2 pm. As the first intervention is the first meeting, we learn about the basic topic of how to introduce ourselves in sign language. We learned about the alphabet and basic daily words that are most often used. The learned sign language is directly applied in communicating with the tutors and other peers during the intervention, which made the intervention very lively and productive.
The participants were very excited and enthusiastic throughout the meeting. Many of the participants were very eager to test their knowledge and perform the learned sign language. The opportunities to try the sign language by themselves and communicate with the sign language were very fun and engaging while applying the learned subjects to applicable and relevant communication cases.
We finished the first intervention at about 5 pm. We hope that BTS’s first intervention gives meaningful experiences and increases the knowledge about how to introduce ourselves and communicate in sign language, especially for FKUI students.
