Item Details

Exploring web-mediated communication: A genre-based linguistic study for new patterns of doctor–patient interaction in online environment

Issue: Vol 12 No. 2-3 (2015) Telemedicine/e-health as mediated communication

Journal: Communication & Medicine

Subject Areas: Healthcare Communication Linguistics

DOI: 10.1558/cam.31897

Abstract:

This paper questions the nature of the communicative event that takes place in online contexts between doctors and web-users, showing computer-mediated linguistic norms and discussing the nature of the participants’ roles. Based on an analysis of 1005 posts occurring between doctors and the users of health service websites, I analyse how doctor–patient communication is affected by the medium and how health professionals overcome issues concerning the virtual medical visit. Results suggest that (a) online medical answers offer a different service from that expected by users, as doctors cannot always fulfill patient requests, and (b) net consultations use aspects of traditional doctor–patient exchange and yet present a language and a style that are affected by the computer-mediated environment. Additionally, it seems that this new form leads to a different model of doctor–patient relationship. The findings are intended to provide new insights into web-based discourse in doctor–patient communication and to demonstrate the emergence of a new style in medical communication.

Author: Marianna Zummo

View Original Web Page

References :

Baron, N. S. (1998) Letters by phone or speech by other means: The linguistics of email. Language and Communication 18 (2): 133–170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(98)00005-6


Bernabeo, E. and Holmboe, E. S. (2013) Patients, providers, and systems need to acquire a specific set of competencies to achieve truly patient-centred care. Health Affairs 32 (2): 250–258. http://dx.doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2012.1120


Brooke, J. (2001) A Semantic Approach to Automated Text Sentiment Analysis. Unpublished Masters of Arts dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.


Broom, A. (2005) Medical specialists’ accounts of the impact of the Internet on the doctor-patient relationship. Health 9 (3): 319–338. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1363459305052903


Bunz, U. and Campbell, S. W. (2002) Accommodating politeness indicators in personal electronic mail messages. Communication Research Reports 21 (1): 11–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08824090409359963


Charon, R. (2001) Narrative medicine: A model for empathy, reflection, profession, and trust. Journal of the American Medical Association 286 (15): 1897–1902. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.286.15.1897


Cho, T. (2010) Linguistic features of electronic mail in the workplace. Language@Internet 7 (3). Retrieved from http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2010/2728


Christmann, S. (2013) The Impact of Online Health Information on the Doctor-patient Relationship. Unpublished Masters of Science thesis, London School of Economics.


Cordella, M. (2004) The Dynamic Consultation: A Discourse Analytical Study of Doctor-patient Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.128


Coulter, A. (2002) The Autonomous Patient. Oxford: Radcliffe Medical Press.


Edwards, A. and Elwyn, G. (2009) Shared Decision-Making in Health Care: Achieving Evidence-based Patient Choice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Fitneva, S. A. (2001) Epistemic marking and reliability judgements: Evidence from Bulgarian. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (3): 401–420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00010-2


Gill, V. T., Pomerantz, A. and Denvir, P. (2010) Preemptive resistance: Patients’ participation in diagnostic sense-making activities. Sociology of Health and Illness 32 (1): 1–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2009.01208.x


Gualtieri, L. N. (2009) The doctor as the second opinion and the internet as the first. In CHI 2009: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2489–2498. Boston: ACM.


Hardey, M. (1999) Doctor in the house: The Internet as a source of health knowledge and a challenge to expertise. Sociology of Health and Illness 21 (6): 820–835. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.00185


Harvey, K., Churchill, D., Crawford, P., Brown, B., Mullany, L., Mcfarlane, A. and McPherson, A. (2008). Health communication and adolescents: What do their emails tell us? Family Practice 25 (4): 304–311. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/fampra/cmn029


Heritage, J. (2010) Questioning in Medicine. In A. F. Freed and S. Ehrlich (eds) ‘Why Do You Ask?’: The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, 42–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Heritage, J. and Robinson, J. (2006) Accounting for the visit: Giving reasons for seeking medical care. In J. Heritage and D. W. Maynard (eds) Communication in Medical Care: Interactions between Primary Care Physicians and Patients, 48–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Herring, S. C. (1996) Two variants of an electronic message schema. In S. C. Herring (ed.) Computer-mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social, and Cross-cultural Perspectives, 81–106. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.39.08her


Herring, S. C. (2006) Computer mediated discourse. In D. Tannen, D. Schriffin and H. Hamilton (eds) Handbook of Discourse Analysis, 612–635. Oxford: Blackwell.


Jessmer, S. L. and Anderson, D. E. (2001) The effect of politeness and grammar on user perceptions of electronic mail. North American Journal of Psychology 3 (2): 331–346.


Ko, K. (1996) Structural characteristics of computer-mediated language: A comparative analysis of interchange discourse. Electronic Journal of Communication 6 (3). Retrieved from http://www.cios.org/EJCPUBLIC/006/3/006315.HTML


Kranich, S. (2009) Epistemic modality in English popular scientific texts and their German translations. Trans-kom 2 (1): 26–41.


Longtin, Y., Sax, H., Leape, L. L., Sheridan, S. E., Donaldson, L. and Pittet, D. (2010) Patient participation: Current knowledge and applicability to patient safety. Mayo Clinic Proceedings 85 (1): 53–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.4065/mcp.2009.0248


Marín Arrese, J. (2004) Evidential and epistemic qualifications in the discourse of fact and opinion: A comparable corpus study. In J. Marín Arrese (ed.) Perspectives on Evidentiality and Modality, 153–184. Madrid: Editorial Complutense.


McMullan, M. (2006) Patients using the internet to obtain health information: How this affects the patient-health professional relationship. Patient Education and Counseling 63 (1–2): 24–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2005.10.006


Mulholland, J. (1999) E-mail: Uses, issues and problems in an institutional setting. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini and C. Nickerson (eds) Writing Business, 57–84. Singapore: Longman.


Peräkylä, A., Antaki, C., Vehviläinen, S. and Leuder, I. (2008) Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490002


Pérez-Sabater, C., Turney, E. and Montero-Fleta, B. (2008) Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication. Ibérica 15: 71–88.


Plungian, V. (2001) The place of evidentiality within the universal grammatical space. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (3): 349–357. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00006-0


Silverman, D. (1997) Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction. London: Sage.


Waldvogel, J. (2007) Greetings and closings in workplace email. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00333.x


Yates, S. J. (1996) Oral and literate linguistic aspects of computer conferencing: A corpus based study. In S. Herring (ed.) Computer-Mediated Communication in Medical Care: Interactions between Primary Care Physicians and Patients, 29–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.