Health communication
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Health communication · Oct 2009
The symbolic and material nature of physician identity: implications for physician-patient communication.
This field study considers the implications of the symbolic and material nature of physician identity for communication with patients. In-depth interviews of physicians across multiple organizational contexts reveal that physician identity is a discursive process of situated meaning in which particular configurations of beliefs, values, and actions are constructed within specific contexts. ⋯ Specific implications of the symbolic and material nature of physician identity for physician-patient communication are examined. Understanding physician identity is important to health communication scholarship because of the ongoing and central nature of physicians in health-care decision making and delivery.