Health communication
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Health communication · Jan 2008
Communication issues at the end of life: reports from hospice volunteers.
The central goal of this study was to inventory and understand difficult communication issues or dilemmas that arise among hospice volunteers, patients, and their families. Hospice volunteers reported, based on their observations and experience, that denial was the most common communication issue or dilemma for patients, family, and caregivers, followed by negative feelings and family conflicts. ⋯ Powerful and wide-ranging emotions were also challenging for dying patients and their caregivers. Problematic integration theory and terror management theory could be developed further by expanding the role of emotions, and trauma management theories could be enhanced by developing deeper understanding of how the loss of social bonds may be as traumatic as the loss of life.
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Health communication · Jan 2006
Transforming emergency medicine through narrative: qualitative action research at a community hospital.
Emergency departments struggle daily to save lives in an environment characterized by staff shortages, limited resources, and an expanding patient population. This qualitative action research study focused on the nature of communication in an urban emergency room (ER) and the organizing practices employed by staff to cope with these environmental changes, highlighting disconnects between current practices and traditional models of emergent care. A narrative description of the ER culture served as an impetus for practical improvements at this site, providing staff with both a unique perspective and a useful tool for improving their emergency care practices.
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Health communication · Jan 2006
Understanding medical interpreters: reconceptualizing bilingual health communication.
This article provides a new approach in conceptualizing bilingual health communication, emphasizing the differences between types of medical interpreters as well as the interrelationships among all participants in bilingual health communication. Confronted by the conflicting results of interpreting services in medical settings, the author used past research to explain why medical interpreters should be categorized into different categories (i.e., chance interpreters, untrained interpreters, bilingual health care providers, on-site interpreters, and telephone interpreters) so that their characteristics and interpreting styles can be better observed and understood. In addition, by recognizing that interpreter-mediated communications in health settings are dynamic situations and that all participants can influence the outcomes of the communication, researchers can start to investigate the interrelationships among all the participants and, thus, develop different strategies that will improve the quality of bilingual health communication.
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Health communication · Jan 2005
Parent resistance to physicians' treatment recommendations: one resource for initiating a negotiation of the treatment decision.
This article examines pediatrician-parent interaction in the context of acute pediatric encounters for children with upper respiratory infections. Parents and physicians orient to treatment recommendations as normatively requiring parent acceptance for physicians to close the activity. Through acceptance, withholding of acceptance, or active resistance, parents have resources with which to negotiate for a treatment outcome that is in line with their own wants. This article offers evidence that even in acute care, shared decision making not only occurs but, through normative constraints, is mandated for parents and physicians to reach accord in the treatment decision.
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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.