Health vocabulary shows up constantly on the TEF Canada and TCF Canada: reading passages about wait times and public health campaigns, listening dialogues set at a pharmacy or a clinic, and speaking tasks where you describe symptoms or explain a problem to a doctor. It is also some of the first vocabulary you will need in real life once you land in Canada — registering for provincial health insurance, finding a family doctor, or explaining what is wrong with you at a walk-in clinic.
Several items below carry a (Québec) or (Canada) tag: la carte soleil, la RAMQ, un CLSC, une clinique sans rendez-vous, and la salle d'urgence. These are the words you will actually hear and use living in Canada. On your exam, use standard French instead — for the emergency room, write or say les urgences, not la salle d'urgence.
| to make a doctor's appointment | prendre rendez-vous chez le médecin |
is the single most useful phrase in the lesson: almost every appointment-based exam task, and almost every real doctor visit, starts with it. Build the rest of the vocabulary around it in layers: who you see (un médecin de famille, un spécialiste, un pharmacien), where you go (une clinique sans rendez-vous, la salle d'urgence, un CLSC), what happens once you are there (une prise de sang, un diagnostic, un dépistage, une intervention chirurgicale, une hospitalisation), and how it gets paid for (la carte d'assurance maladie, une couverture médicale, les frais médicaux, un arrêt de travail). The lesson closes with the vocabulary of prevention and well-being — la prévention, une vaccination, la santé mentale, l'épuisement professionnel — themes that turn up often in TCF reading passages about public health.
