Health communication
-
Health communication · Jan 2003
Integrating the communicative predicament and enhancement of aging models: the case of older Native Americans.
This article addresses issues of diversity in intergenerational communication by introducing a model that integrates key aspects of the communication predicament and enhancement models of aging with other potent constructs (e.g., group vitality, mindfulness). The model is then applied to the health care experience of an understudied population-older Native Americans. Specifically, it is used to illuminate how intergenerational communication may be facilitated or, indeed, hindered by communicative processes born out of categorization and stereotyping. Health care professionals (in particular), whose working environment is increasingly populated by older economically, culturally, and ethnically diverse patients, should be made aware of some of the strengths and weaknesses of their communicative practices in such intergenerational interactions.
-
Health communication · Jan 2003
ReviewThe use of humor in promoting positive provider-patient interactions in a hospital rehabilitation unit.
Humor within the health care setting apparently can serve to facilitate positive patient-provider interactions and to create a patient-centered environment. This article provides an ethnographic account of patient-provider interactions held during therapeutic activity sessions within a hospital unit (MIRTH) designed to promote therapeutic humor. ⋯ Whereas MIRTH used contrived humor to portray its identity as a humor unit, staff and patients also took advantage of spontaneous humor that emerged out of interactions. Humor appeared secondary to the primary outcome of promoting patients' happiness and well being.
-
Health communication · Jan 2003
The communication of palliative care for the elderly cancer patient.
Palliative care (PC) is often recommended by physicians for their elderly patients who are terminally ill. In contrast to hospice care, which precludes the use of any curative treatment at life's end stages, PC seeks primarily to comfort patients and to keep them pain free, yet it does not necessarily preclude medical treatment. ⋯ Furthermore, few methods in PC research incorporate patients' narratives and lived experiences in the final stages of their lives. We argue that a holistic, patient-centered approach must guide research in PC, including the treatment of elderly patients as "active interpreters, managers, and creators of the meaning of their health and illness" (Vanderford, Jenks, & Sharf, 1997, p.14) and of the meaning of their lives.