DOCTOR OFFICE AS A DISCOURSE COMMUNITY
Abstract
UC Davis offers undergraduate degrees with copious amounts of scientific knowledge that can prepare students for future medical professions; however, very little emphasis exists on the communication that students will encounter in their work setting. This study aims to inform students regarding the discourse community of a medical office by analyzing forms of communication. I hope this paper can help students, who are pursuing a medical profession, to successfully integrate into this community. This paper investigated the discourse community through the analysis of two scholarly essays with a connection with my own work experience, that shows the importance of communication within the medical setting and how effective communication can increase patients’ satisfaction. Moreover, the genre analysis focused on the communication software system, Electronic Health Record, and how the system improves patient care. As a result of the researches, I discovered the common goal of the discourse community is to improve public health by optimizing patient care. In order to do so, mechanisms of communication such as written and verbal communication play essential roles to provide communications among office staff and patients. On this basis, it is shown that intercommunication is crucial in medical professions and it is a key factor to improve patient care.
Introduction
Many of the students majoring in Biological Sciences are pursuing a career in the healthcare professions. Being in any medical profession, the ultimate goal is to provide patient-centered care, and communication is a pivotal component that allows professionals to provide care that is tailored to patient’s conditions, beliefs, and expectations. In order to reach the goal, the entire medical office needs to work together as a team to provide high-quality care. As a UC Davis undergraduate student and a staff in a doctor’s office, I see the indispensable need for potential students who are interested in the healthcare field to establish basic requirements to provide patient care as they might be patients or care providers themselves too. Although science classes at UC Davis provide excellent fundamental science content and resources to prepare students for master or doctorate programs in medicine, many of the courses I have taken have not mentioned how the office setting and communications that they are going to participate in their future careers. Even after years of training, medical staff might show inadequate communicative skills to inform patients in a professional manner. Thus, it is essential for students to be informed about the “discourse community” of a doctor’s office before they decide their future path.
The term “discourse community” was defined by John Swales, a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan, as a group of people using certain methods of communication to reach for a common desired outcome (1990, p. 220-222). In this paper, I will examine the medical office as a discourse community through four of the six defining characteristics that John Swales proposed: common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, participatory mechanism, and specific lexis. The goal of this paper is to provide the students with a sense of how communications within a medical office help to provide better patient care and increase patient satisfaction. With the information delivered to students, they can better recognize the importance of healthcare providers and how to become a potential member of this discourse community.
Method
This paper will investigate the discourse community through the analysis of two scholarly essays. I plan to use the scholarly source, “Physician-patient communication in the primary care office: a systematic review” by Rainer Beck, Rebecca Daughtridge, and Philip Sloane, who are all licensed health professionals at the University of North Carolina. The article reviews literature from 1975 to 2000 that focuses on the topic of office interactions between primary care physicians and patients that was evaluated by neutral observers. The information was useful because it analyzes both verbal and nonverbal communication and breaks down the languages and words used in the office. The purpose of the information was to inform and teach that medical educators should focus on teaching behaviors that can enhance favorable patient outcomes. Also, I will use the article, “Communication Skills Training for Physicians Improves Patient Satisfaction” by Adrienne Boissy, who is a staff physician and chief experience office of Cleveland Clinic Health System, to illustrate an observational study that reveals the impact of physician communication skill training on patient experience. The article was an observational study that focuses on how communication skills training can improve patient satisfaction skills and reduced physician burnout. The purpose of the information was to inform the audience how communication was important in a medical setting. Both articles are going to help students understand the expected types of communication encountered between the doctor and the patients.
In addition, I will conduct a genre analysis on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), which is a communicative software system, by analyzing the article “Anatomy of an electronic health record” published on the Harvard School of Public Health website and the article “Impact of Electronic Medical Record Use on the Patient-Doctor Relationship and Communication: A Systematic Review” by Maria Alcocer Alkureishi and many other researchers to investigate how the software system used in the medical office helps and staff and patients to communicate. As a medical assistant who currently works directly with doctors and patients, I will also provide some insights regarding the communication skills that are required at work. In order to become a new member of the medical professional community, these skills are essential for everyone who wants to be successful in their career.
Results and Discussion
Common Public Goals
According to John Swales’ six defining characteristics of a discourse community, it is important to have a common goal (p. 220). In the discourse community of a doctor’s office, the common goal is to improve public health status by providing high-quality medical care that increases patient satisfaction. Doctor-patient communication plays a key role in the purpose of promoting patient satisfaction. Studies show that when patients are well-informed and are given choices regarding their treatments, they are more likely to accept medical recommendations and practice healthy routines such as well-balanced diets and exercise in real life. The flowchart shown in Figure 1 shows how information exchange and medical decision-making can increase patient satisfaction, both short and long-term (Beck, 2002). In real life scenario, as medical staff utilize nonverbal behaviors such as vocal intonation and movements and verbal behavior such as some greetings can help develop positive relationships between the patients and the staff. Therefore, patients will be more comfortable in sharing his/her personal conditions with medical professionals. Therefore, for the discourse community members to aim for the common goal, they have to do so by having effective communication.
Figure 1. Behaviors lead to positive patient relationship.
Physician’s own well-being and empathy are essential for producing positive health outcomes. In an article that demonstrates the importance of communication in the discourse community, the authors found that courses regarding patient-physician communication were not provided sufficiently in medical school. In an observational study conducted by staff in Cleveland Clinic Health System, physicians from different fields are enrolled in a course that focuses on training in communication skills. After the course, physicians filled out a different assessment that measures their emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. The result shows “Physicians reported high course satisfaction and showed significant improvement in empathy and burnout, including all measures of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment” in their medical practice. The communicative course allows physicians to redevelop characteristics such as empathy in their communication with each patient as the physician might be robotic after seeing thousands of patients and fail to provide patient-centered care. In addition, the author further explains how the “spread of a model similar to ours could bring substantial change to the quality and outcomes of communication…”. The author recommended the model of communication course they provided to be incorporated in large organizations to improve the patient experience. This shows that not only effective communication help doctors to achieve the goal of providing better patient care with empathy, but it also helps physicians to avoid burnout and increase self-satisfaction.
Mechanisms of Intercommunication
Another important aspect of a discourse community is the mechanisms of intercommunication among members (p.221). In a doctor's office, the crucial communications among doctors and staff can be divided into written and verbal communications. Written communication is often documented electronically through Practice Mate, which details regarding numerous patients are computerized and access to answers and results can be easily conduct. Practice Mate allows staff and the doctor to write down the visit reason or anything to pay attention to beside patient’s appointment on the schedule. This allows the whole office to be attentive and alert to each patient. Practice Mate not only provides communication among office staff, but it can also serve as a medium for the patient- medical office communication. There is a function on Practice Mate that’s called “Patient Portal”. Patients register for an account and they can communicate directly with the doctor regarding their test results. This method is more preferred because it provides better patient confidentiality and privacy compared to traditional email. In addition, even if patients walked out of the office and suddenly realize they forget to ask the doctor a question, they can always message the doctor later through Patient Portal. Healthcare information technologies help to enhance staff communication as well as patient-doctor communication.
Compared to written communication, Verbal communication is more common in the medical setting as it is a more direct form of communication that results in rapid responses. When in a doctor’s office, back-office staff will verbalize any abnormal vitals to the doctor starting with the patient’s last name, the spelling of the last name, first name, room number, and the abnormality noticed. This practice allows the doctor to accurately identify the patient and avoid mistakes in patient identification. In addition, after the patient’s specimen is taken, the staff and doctor will perform cross-check with the patient verbally by asking the patient to confirm his/ her birthday and last name. Then the staff will verbalize the ICD-diagnose code, patient’s insurance, the test name, and the designated lab to the doctor to ensure the correct specimen of the patient is sent to the right laboratory. In this case, verbal communication is often used to avoid mistakes in patient identification. Although identification might not seem like a big issue, imagine if the doctor performs surgery on a wrong patient or a cancerous specimen are labeled with the wrong patient! Verbal communications allow health care workers to eliminate careless mistakes that can lead to negligence.
Participatory Mechanism
Swales’ characterization of the participatory mechanism is used primarily to provide information and feedback among the members within the discourse community (p.221). In the medical office, the participator mechanism concurs with the written communication systems such as Practice Mate mentioned above. When one staff enters a patient’s information or document a patient’s question, the whole office would be updated with the new information. Moreover, the study shows that “sharing medical data and discussing treatment effects have been shown to improve comprehension and satisfaction.” (Beck, 2002). Providing feedback and updated new information is the principal duty of office staff in furtherance of the doctor to optimal patient care. In return, the doctor will also provide patients check-out notes to the front-desk staff through Practice Mate, so the staff can further assist the patient in tasks such as scheduling the next appointment or applying for an authorization letter.
Another example of providing feedback is during patient phone calls. After front-desk staff typed down the patient’s concern and transfer the message to the doctor, the doctor will respond by typing the response under the message. After the front-desk staff ends the call, he or she will leave feedback on whether the problem is solved. This participatory mechanism allows the doctor to review the issue again when it is not busy and see if there are any other concerns. The participatory mechanism of using the software, Practice Mate, promotes communication within the office, and this allows medical staffs to follow up with any situations encountered.
Specific Lexis
Swales also characterized a discourse community as having specific lexis, that is any specific words, languages, abbreviations used in the community (p.222). In a medical setting, abbreviations are widely used. Some common ones are “BP” which means “Blood Pressure”, “US” which stands for “Ultrasound”, “ECG” for “electrocardiogram” and the list goes on. The abbreviations are used for efficient communication exchange between the staff in the medical office. In addition, many medical terminologies are based on Latin roots words. By knowing some of the prefixes and suffixes, one can understand the meaning of the word without searching it up. For example, “brady” means “slow”, “tachy” means fast, and “cardia” refers to an action of the heart. By knowing these, then the definition of “bradycardia” and “tachycardia” seems self-explanatory, one means slow heartbeat, and the other means fast heartbeat. By knowing these Latin words, one can quickly grasp the severity of the condition of the patient and can have a sense of that kind of situation they will encounter. This allows the medical professional to modify their communication method that is suitable for the situation. For example, there might be other patients in the same room, when a patient or doctor mentions a word with the suffix of “plasty”, which means “surgical repair”, then they know to keep it as a private talk. Studies shows that behaviors such as “physician’s expression of intellectual appreciation of a patient’s situation and empathy as a global assessment variable” will lead to positive health outcome (Beck, 2016). This shows the certain language used during a conversation with a patient can help protect the patient’s privacy. In order to become a successful member of this discourse community, students should monitor the wording they used when communicating sensitive information towards patients.
Genre Analysis
After reviewing four of Swales’ six defining principles in a discourse community, the importance of communication in inpatient care is presented. To provide a more in-depth understanding of importance of genres of communication to the field, I will talk specifically about the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). This section will guide students through the software that is dominantly used in the medical setting. EMR demonstrates the electronic communication genre encounter in medical professions.
The home page of an electronic medical record presents all important aspects regarding a patient’s health record. It consists of different components such as vital signs, current medications, problems diagnosed, family history, and many more depending on the patient’s health conditions. As shown in Figure 2, different categories of information made up the unique health record for one patient. Whenever the patient walks into a medical office or hospital, the medical professional can have access to his or her record and the information was shared among the discourse community. The organization of the medical record allows the doctor to take a glance at different components on a single page with minimal scrolling needed. In addition, the entire medical office is shared with the same updated information that minimized the chance of malpractice in the discourse community. This allows the doctor and medical staffs to provide patient care more efficiently and with accuracy.
The conventions of the EMR also serve the purpose of efficiency. The software consists of numbers and short medical phrases that can be easily interpreted by professionals. Communication is essential to gather information for the EMR, where staffs have to take vitals for the patient and ask questions regarding the patient’s medical history. Sometimes patients cannot respond using the exact medical terminology used by staff, the doctor will need to continue to guide the questions to further explore the patient’s condition. In order to document the jargon and acronym on EMR, students must recognize the specific lexis used in this community.
Abstract
UC Davis offers undergraduate degrees with copious amounts of scientific knowledge that can prepare students for future medical professions; however, very little emphasis exists on the communication that students will encounter in their work setting. This study aims to inform students regarding the discourse community of a medical office by analyzing forms of communication. I hope this paper can help students, who are pursuing a medical profession, to successfully integrate into this community. This paper investigated the discourse community through the analysis of two scholarly essays with a connection with my own work experience, that shows the importance of communication within the medical setting and how effective communication can increase patients’ satisfaction. Moreover, the genre analysis focused on the communication software system, Electronic Health Record, and how the system improves patient care. As a result of the researches, I discovered the common goal of the discourse community is to improve public health by optimizing patient care. In order to do so, mechanisms of communication such as written and verbal communication play essential roles to provide communications among office staff and patients. On this basis, it is shown that intercommunication is crucial in medical professions and it is a key factor to improve patient care.
Introduction
Many of the students majoring in Biological Sciences are pursuing a career in the healthcare professions. Being in any medical profession, the ultimate goal is to provide patient-centered care, and communication is a pivotal component that allows professionals to provide care that is tailored to patient’s conditions, beliefs, and expectations. In order to reach the goal, the entire medical office needs to work together as a team to provide high-quality care. As a UC Davis undergraduate student and a staff in a doctor’s office, I see the indispensable need for potential students who are interested in the healthcare field to establish basic requirements to provide patient care as they might be patients or care providers themselves too. Although science classes at UC Davis provide excellent fundamental science content and resources to prepare students for master or doctorate programs in medicine, many of the courses I have taken have not mentioned how the office setting and communications that they are going to participate in their future careers. Even after years of training, medical staff might show inadequate communicative skills to inform patients in a professional manner. Thus, it is essential for students to be informed about the “discourse community” of a doctor’s office before they decide their future path.
The term “discourse community” was defined by John Swales, a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan, as a group of people using certain methods of communication to reach for a common desired outcome (1990, p. 220-222). In this paper, I will examine the medical office as a discourse community through four of the six defining characteristics that John Swales proposed: common public goals, mechanisms of intercommunication, participatory mechanism, and specific lexis. The goal of this paper is to provide the students with a sense of how communications within a medical office help to provide better patient care and increase patient satisfaction. With the information delivered to students, they can better recognize the importance of healthcare providers and how to become a potential member of this discourse community.
Method
This paper will investigate the discourse community through the analysis of two scholarly essays. I plan to use the scholarly source, “Physician-patient communication in the primary care office: a systematic review” by Rainer Beck, Rebecca Daughtridge, and Philip Sloane, who are all licensed health professionals at the University of North Carolina. The article reviews literature from 1975 to 2000 that focuses on the topic of office interactions between primary care physicians and patients that was evaluated by neutral observers. The information was useful because it analyzes both verbal and nonverbal communication and breaks down the languages and words used in the office. The purpose of the information was to inform and teach that medical educators should focus on teaching behaviors that can enhance favorable patient outcomes. Also, I will use the article, “Communication Skills Training for Physicians Improves Patient Satisfaction” by Adrienne Boissy, who is a staff physician and chief experience office of Cleveland Clinic Health System, to illustrate an observational study that reveals the impact of physician communication skill training on patient experience. The article was an observational study that focuses on how communication skills training can improve patient satisfaction skills and reduced physician burnout. The purpose of the information was to inform the audience how communication was important in a medical setting. Both articles are going to help students understand the expected types of communication encountered between the doctor and the patients.
In addition, I will conduct a genre analysis on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), which is a communicative software system, by analyzing the article “Anatomy of an electronic health record” published on the Harvard School of Public Health website and the article “Impact of Electronic Medical Record Use on the Patient-Doctor Relationship and Communication: A Systematic Review” by Maria Alcocer Alkureishi and many other researchers to investigate how the software system used in the medical office helps and staff and patients to communicate. As a medical assistant who currently works directly with doctors and patients, I will also provide some insights regarding the communication skills that are required at work. In order to become a new member of the medical professional community, these skills are essential for everyone who wants to be successful in their career.
Results and Discussion
Common Public Goals
According to John Swales’ six defining characteristics of a discourse community, it is important to have a common goal (p. 220). In the discourse community of a doctor’s office, the common goal is to improve public health status by providing high-quality medical care that increases patient satisfaction. Doctor-patient communication plays a key role in the purpose of promoting patient satisfaction. Studies show that when patients are well-informed and are given choices regarding their treatments, they are more likely to accept medical recommendations and practice healthy routines such as well-balanced diets and exercise in real life. The flowchart shown in Figure 1 shows how information exchange and medical decision-making can increase patient satisfaction, both short and long-term (Beck, 2002). In real life scenario, as medical staff utilize nonverbal behaviors such as vocal intonation and movements and verbal behavior such as some greetings can help develop positive relationships between the patients and the staff. Therefore, patients will be more comfortable in sharing his/her personal conditions with medical professionals. Therefore, for the discourse community members to aim for the common goal, they have to do so by having effective communication.
Figure 1. Behaviors lead to positive patient relationship.
Physician’s own well-being and empathy are essential for producing positive health outcomes. In an article that demonstrates the importance of communication in the discourse community, the authors found that courses regarding patient-physician communication were not provided sufficiently in medical school. In an observational study conducted by staff in Cleveland Clinic Health System, physicians from different fields are enrolled in a course that focuses on training in communication skills. After the course, physicians filled out a different assessment that measures their emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. The result shows “Physicians reported high course satisfaction and showed significant improvement in empathy and burnout, including all measures of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment” in their medical practice. The communicative course allows physicians to redevelop characteristics such as empathy in their communication with each patient as the physician might be robotic after seeing thousands of patients and fail to provide patient-centered care. In addition, the author further explains how the “spread of a model similar to ours could bring substantial change to the quality and outcomes of communication…”. The author recommended the model of communication course they provided to be incorporated in large organizations to improve the patient experience. This shows that not only effective communication help doctors to achieve the goal of providing better patient care with empathy, but it also helps physicians to avoid burnout and increase self-satisfaction.
Mechanisms of Intercommunication
Another important aspect of a discourse community is the mechanisms of intercommunication among members (p.221). In a doctor's office, the crucial communications among doctors and staff can be divided into written and verbal communications. Written communication is often documented electronically through Practice Mate, which details regarding numerous patients are computerized and access to answers and results can be easily conduct. Practice Mate allows staff and the doctor to write down the visit reason or anything to pay attention to beside patient’s appointment on the schedule. This allows the whole office to be attentive and alert to each patient. Practice Mate not only provides communication among office staff, but it can also serve as a medium for the patient- medical office communication. There is a function on Practice Mate that’s called “Patient Portal”. Patients register for an account and they can communicate directly with the doctor regarding their test results. This method is more preferred because it provides better patient confidentiality and privacy compared to traditional email. In addition, even if patients walked out of the office and suddenly realize they forget to ask the doctor a question, they can always message the doctor later through Patient Portal. Healthcare information technologies help to enhance staff communication as well as patient-doctor communication.
Compared to written communication, Verbal communication is more common in the medical setting as it is a more direct form of communication that results in rapid responses. When in a doctor’s office, back-office staff will verbalize any abnormal vitals to the doctor starting with the patient’s last name, the spelling of the last name, first name, room number, and the abnormality noticed. This practice allows the doctor to accurately identify the patient and avoid mistakes in patient identification. In addition, after the patient’s specimen is taken, the staff and doctor will perform cross-check with the patient verbally by asking the patient to confirm his/ her birthday and last name. Then the staff will verbalize the ICD-diagnose code, patient’s insurance, the test name, and the designated lab to the doctor to ensure the correct specimen of the patient is sent to the right laboratory. In this case, verbal communication is often used to avoid mistakes in patient identification. Although identification might not seem like a big issue, imagine if the doctor performs surgery on a wrong patient or a cancerous specimen are labeled with the wrong patient! Verbal communications allow health care workers to eliminate careless mistakes that can lead to negligence.
Participatory Mechanism
Swales’ characterization of the participatory mechanism is used primarily to provide information and feedback among the members within the discourse community (p.221). In the medical office, the participator mechanism concurs with the written communication systems such as Practice Mate mentioned above. When one staff enters a patient’s information or document a patient’s question, the whole office would be updated with the new information. Moreover, the study shows that “sharing medical data and discussing treatment effects have been shown to improve comprehension and satisfaction.” (Beck, 2002). Providing feedback and updated new information is the principal duty of office staff in furtherance of the doctor to optimal patient care. In return, the doctor will also provide patients check-out notes to the front-desk staff through Practice Mate, so the staff can further assist the patient in tasks such as scheduling the next appointment or applying for an authorization letter.
Another example of providing feedback is during patient phone calls. After front-desk staff typed down the patient’s concern and transfer the message to the doctor, the doctor will respond by typing the response under the message. After the front-desk staff ends the call, he or she will leave feedback on whether the problem is solved. This participatory mechanism allows the doctor to review the issue again when it is not busy and see if there are any other concerns. The participatory mechanism of using the software, Practice Mate, promotes communication within the office, and this allows medical staffs to follow up with any situations encountered.
Specific Lexis
Swales also characterized a discourse community as having specific lexis, that is any specific words, languages, abbreviations used in the community (p.222). In a medical setting, abbreviations are widely used. Some common ones are “BP” which means “Blood Pressure”, “US” which stands for “Ultrasound”, “ECG” for “electrocardiogram” and the list goes on. The abbreviations are used for efficient communication exchange between the staff in the medical office. In addition, many medical terminologies are based on Latin roots words. By knowing some of the prefixes and suffixes, one can understand the meaning of the word without searching it up. For example, “brady” means “slow”, “tachy” means fast, and “cardia” refers to an action of the heart. By knowing these, then the definition of “bradycardia” and “tachycardia” seems self-explanatory, one means slow heartbeat, and the other means fast heartbeat. By knowing these Latin words, one can quickly grasp the severity of the condition of the patient and can have a sense of that kind of situation they will encounter. This allows the medical professional to modify their communication method that is suitable for the situation. For example, there might be other patients in the same room, when a patient or doctor mentions a word with the suffix of “plasty”, which means “surgical repair”, then they know to keep it as a private talk. Studies shows that behaviors such as “physician’s expression of intellectual appreciation of a patient’s situation and empathy as a global assessment variable” will lead to positive health outcome (Beck, 2016). This shows the certain language used during a conversation with a patient can help protect the patient’s privacy. In order to become a successful member of this discourse community, students should monitor the wording they used when communicating sensitive information towards patients.
Genre Analysis
After reviewing four of Swales’ six defining principles in a discourse community, the importance of communication in inpatient care is presented. To provide a more in-depth understanding of importance of genres of communication to the field, I will talk specifically about the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). This section will guide students through the software that is dominantly used in the medical setting. EMR demonstrates the electronic communication genre encounter in medical professions.
The home page of an electronic medical record presents all important aspects regarding a patient’s health record. It consists of different components such as vital signs, current medications, problems diagnosed, family history, and many more depending on the patient’s health conditions. As shown in Figure 2, different categories of information made up the unique health record for one patient. Whenever the patient walks into a medical office or hospital, the medical professional can have access to his or her record and the information was shared among the discourse community. The organization of the medical record allows the doctor to take a glance at different components on a single page with minimal scrolling needed. In addition, the entire medical office is shared with the same updated information that minimized the chance of malpractice in the discourse community. This allows the doctor and medical staffs to provide patient care more efficiently and with accuracy.
The conventions of the EMR also serve the purpose of efficiency. The software consists of numbers and short medical phrases that can be easily interpreted by professionals. Communication is essential to gather information for the EMR, where staffs have to take vitals for the patient and ask questions regarding the patient’s medical history. Sometimes patients cannot respond using the exact medical terminology used by staff, the doctor will need to continue to guide the questions to further explore the patient’s condition. In order to document the jargon and acronym on EMR, students must recognize the specific lexis used in this community.
Figure 2. Different components of an electronic health record.
To produce a completed EMR, medical staff must cooperate with a doctor and orally requesting information from the patients or even from another medical office. In another article, reviews from credible medical article websites such as PubMed and PsycINFO from August 2013 to March 2015 are chosen by keywords related to patient-doctor communication. These studies then are reviewed to understand the impact of EMR use on patient-doctor communication. Studies show that majority of patients felt that the electronic documentation “facilitated the process of communication, clarification, and discussion as well as some potentially patient-centered communication behaviors.” (Alkureishi, 2016). This shows that the practice of EMR helps to aim for the common goal of the discourse community, that is, providing better patient care and increase patient satisfaction. Based on this article, students should understand the importance of EMR in communication within the discourse community.
Conclusion
Undergraduate students at UC Davis who are interested in pursuing a medical profession will now have a basic understanding of the importance of communication and teamwork in the medical setting. By examining this discourse community using Swales’ four defining characteristics, students will have a deeper understanding of how they can integrate into this community, such as types of communications are utilized in the community, the common goals, and the specific languages used in the community. The common goal of the community is to provide patient care and in order to do so, communications among staff and patients are crucial. This paper hopefully can help students made up their decision in their future career. Some ways that students can practice their communication training in their education is by shadowing doctors or doing some volunteer work that allows them to observe daily interactions within a doctor’s office. Although there is a lot of responsibility involved in this profession, patient satisfaction and recovery make this a rewarding career.
References:
Alkureishi, M. A., Lee, W. W., Lyons, M., Press, V. G., Imam, S., Nkansah-Amankra, A., Werner, D., & Arora, V. M. (2016). Impact of Electronic Medical Record Use on the Patient-Doctor Relationship and Communication: A Systematic Review. Journal of general internal medicine, 31(5), 548–560.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-015-3582-1
Anatomy of an electronic health record. (2014, February 19). http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/fall08healthrecord/.
Beck, R. S., Daughtridge, R., & Sloane, P. D. (2002). Physician-patient communication in the primary care office: a systematic review. The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice, 15(1), 25–38.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11841136/
Boissy, A., Windover, A. K., Bokar, D., Karafa, M., Neuendorf, K., Frankel, R. M., Merlino, J., & Rothberg, M. B. (2016). Communication Skills Training for Physicians Improves Patient Satisfaction. Journal of general internal medicine, 31(7), 755–761. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-016-3597-2
Swales, J. (2011). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.