County councils in Sweden annually engages foreign-educated doctors from other EU countries, to cover the shortage of doctors. This article examines a group of fourteen doctors that have been recruited from Eastern and Southern Europe to work in Sweden. It investigates the doctors’ development of interactional competence during an intensive Swedish course conducted on a campus in Poland for 14 weeks. The investigation is conducted through role-plays in the form of medical consultations arranged on two occasions in the course, the 6th and 12th week respectively. A total of 28 role-plays have been audio recorded and analysed using conversation analysis, CA. The main question is whether the participants’ ability to respond to the patients’ concerns advanced during the course.

The analysis shows that the doctors’ ability to ask follow-up questions related to the patients’ problem description improved on the second role-play occasion, as well as their ability to demonstrate their understanding of the patients’ descriptions. There is also a tendency, the second time, for follow-up questions to lead to more fully developed responses from the patients. The result therefore indicates that the doctors’ interactional competence increased during the course, despite the fact that the language teaching during the course is mainly based on written texts. In addition, a minor quantitative analysis indicates a faster talk rate, increased length of turns, and fewer hesitation marks during the second role play.