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Task Force on Health Communication
The health communication task force was launched in October 2006. The task force aims to focus on the importance of a social psychological approach to understanding communication in the health context in terms of policy, practice and health outcomes.
The task force will take a multidisciplinary approach to explore how communication matters in the health context. There will be an emphasis on the value of using different conceptual and methodological approaches to studying health communication that are informed broadly by social psychology.
There are significant changes occurring in health care globally: new technology and new practices are constantly being developed, and people are living longer and hence having more interactions with health professionals. We need to ensure that we are providing effective healthcare.
Effective healthcare involves communication in many ways including effective policy formulation, patient-health practitioner communication and communication between health practitioners. There is also growing interest in how new technologies are used and whether or not they improve the communication interface.
The goals of the task force are to:
- Examine what is effective communication in the health context
- Delineate the problems currently existing in health communication and the potential impact of these problems.
- Outline measures by which communication in the health context may be improved.
- Look at conceptual and methodological innovations in the study of health communication.
The task force will have a number of outcomes:
- Build a network of researchers examining health communication from a social psychological approach.
- Special IALSP Symposium at International Communication Association, Montreal, 2008, which we will anticipate will be published as a special issue.
- Panel at International Conference on Language and Social Psychology, Tucson, Arizona, 2008
Here is the list of members together with their research interests and contact details. We will be regularly updating this site with news about relevant conferences and publications and updates on the activities of task force members.
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IALSP Health Communication Task Force Members
Chairs
Dr Liz Jones
Dr Bernadette Watson
Members [ * denotes members who are interested in the area but are not actively researching in the area]
Professor Cindy Gallois
* Ms Denise Ellis
* Ms Eda Beck
* Dr James Green
Dr Janice Krieger
* Dr Jenny Gamble
Professor Jon Nussbaum
Dr Julien Mirivel
Associate Professor Kevin Dew
* Dr Leanne Casey
Professor Linda Wood
Dr Margaret Pitts
Professor Michael Hecht
Dr Michelle King
Dr Michelle Miller-Day
Professor Pamela Kalbfleisch
Associate Professor Patricia O'Connor
Dr Peter Bull
Professor Peter MacIntyre
Professor Rick Iedema
* Dr Stella Stevens
Dr Sue McKay
Ms Suellen Hopfer
Ms Susan Barone
Associate Professor Susan Fussell
Dr Tony Young
Dr Jenny Fitzgerald
Maria Stubbe
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Dr Liz Jones
School of Psychology, Griffith University, AUSTRALIA
l.jones@griffith.edu.au
Dr Bernadette Watson
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA
Bernadette@uq.edu.au
Liz Jones and Bernadette Watson research health practitioner-client communication.
They focus on the intergroup perspective of the communication dynamic. This focus contrasts other health communication research where such interactions are often viewed as interpersonal events.
Currently they are examining communication problems in clinical handovers across a range of different clinical handover settings.
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Professor Cindy Gallois
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA, c.gallois@uq.edu.au
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Ms Denise Ellis
School of Medicine, Griffith University, AUSTRALIA denise.ellis@griffith.edu.au
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*Ms Eda Beck
School of Medical Sciences, Griffith University, AUSTRALIA e.beck@griffith.edu.au
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*Dr James Green
School of Pharmacy, Otgao University, NEW ZEALAND ajamesgreen@gmail.com
James Green's current research is aiming to study and improve two aspects of communication in health contexts. The first is looking at communication about prescription medicines by drug companies to consumers (direct-to-consumer advertising), whether this is an appropriate form of communication, and how it might be improved. The second will be looking at interactions in pharmacies, to determine what are effective communication strategies in this context, and to look at how they may be improved. In this work James hopes to use a complimentary mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses.
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Dr Janice Krieger
School of Communication, Ohio State University,
USA raup-krieger.1@osu.edu
Janice Krieger's research interests include: language and health disparities, the use of metaphor in health contexts and processes for adapting health messages for diverse populations.
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*Dr Jenny Gamble
School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University, AUSTRALIA j.gamble@griffith.edu.au
Jenny Gamble is interested in patient-health practitioner communication.
Her most recent publications in the area are:
Gamble, J., Creedy, D., Teakle, B. (In press). Women's expectations of maternity services: A community-based survey. Women and Birth. Accepted 21 January 2007.
Gamble, J. & Creedy, D. (In press). A counselling model for postpartum women following distressing birth experiences. Midwifery. Accepted 27 February 07.
Gamble, J., Creedy, D., McCourt, C. Weaver, J., Statham, H, Beake, S. (In press). A critique of the literature on women's request for caesarean section. Birth Accepted 8 December 2006.
She is also interested in communication between health practitioners. See
Walsh, D. & Gamble, J. (2005) Multidisciplinary collaboration and team work: misnomers for subjugation? Women & Birth 18(3), 7-8.
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Professor Jon Nussbaum
Communication Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, USA
jfn5@psu.edu
Jon Nussbaum researches communication within the long term continuing care environment. He is interested in several aspects of continuing care including: Geriatric care teams, resident-staff interaction, family and friendship relationships once a person enters the continuing care environment, and how communication is related to overall resident well being.
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Dr Julien Mirivel
Department of Speech Communication, University of Arkansas, USA jcmirivel@ualr.edu
Julien Mirivel's research examines videotaped interaction between plastic surgeons and patients seeking, sometimes undergoing, aesthetic surgery (e.g., breast augmentation, tummy tuck, face lift, and so forth). Julien has a couple pieces currently in press in Health Communication and Discourse & Communication.
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Associate Professor Kevin Dew and Maria Stubbe
Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Otago, NEW ZEALAND
Kevin.dew@otago.ac.nz
maria.stubbe@otago.ac.nz
Kevin Dew and Maria Stubbe are part of a multidisciplinary research team "applied research on communication in health". In one project they have video-recorded around 70 consultations between doctors and patients or surgeons and patients. Their original interest was to explore issues around clinical decision making in relation to rationed services - but they are exploring a whole range of issues in relation to doctor-patient interaction. The analytic approach is informed but not bound to ethnomethodology - using conversation analysis and categorisation analysis.
Below are details of Kevin Dew's and Maria Stubbe's current research project.
Research issue:
To track the journey of individual patients through the health-care system in order to gain as complete a picture as possible of the "discursive fabric" of each episode of care An episode of care for this research is from the point of referral from a GP through the secondary care system back to the GP. The data will be used to explore reported disparities in access to health services, particularly differences relating to ethnicity and socio-economic status.
Theoretical approach:
Among others - Conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics will be used to explore the actual interactions between health practitioners and patients.
Actor Network theory will be used to explore the connections between lay and expert knowledge, how particular connections become durable and the outcomes that these connections have.
Methods:
Participants will be patients attending primary care clinics who are referred to secondary services (e.g. outpatient clinics or specialists) for treatment or assessment. Their interactions will be tracked and recorded as they enter the hospital system until their episode of care is completed. Data will be collected from various sources, including recordings of interactions with health professionals, medical records and guidelines, interviews with health professionals, logs kept by the patients, and field observations of the health-care setting. The data analysis will seek to answer questions on what features of communication are important, what forms of knowledge are given credibility, and how we can better understand the process and sequence of referral and its outcomes in primary and secondary health care contexts.
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*Dr Leanne Casey
l.casey@griffith.edu.au
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Professor Linda Wood
Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, CANADA
wood@psy.uoguelph.ca
Linda Wood is starting research on interactions among physicians, patients, families and other health care personnel involved in home palliative care.
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Dr Margaret Pitts
Department of Communication and Theatre Arts, Old Dominion University, USA
mpitts@odu.edu
Margaret Pitts investigates lifespan adjustment and well-being across relational and cultural contexts primarily using naturalistic research methods. Her health and wellbeing research centers on successful ageing, end-of-life experiences, and family decision making regarding health issues such as organ donation and HPV vaccination.
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Professor Michael Hecht
Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, USA
mlh10@psu.edu
Michael Hecht has been studying adolescent substance use prevention for a number of years, looking at narratives of substance users and the role of ethnicity and gender (and identity), as well as families in these process. Michael has been part of a group the developed a successful school-based intervention that is multicultural and narrative.
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Dr Michelle King
School of Pharmacy, Griffith University, AUSTRALIA
michelle-a.king@griffith.edu.au
Michelle King is interested in how communication influences patient outcomes. She is currently examining how elderly patients are under-treated for pain and how communication problems contribute to this. Michelle is particularly interested in the implications of health communication research for teaching in the health professions.
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Dr Michelle Miller-Day
Communication Arts and Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, USA
mam32@psu.edu
How does communication in the family positively or negatively affect the health and well-being of its members? This is a central focus of Michelle Miller-Day's research. Some of the core questions she seeks to address in her research are "How do families communicate about health risks?" and "What kinds of family communication patterns place members at risk for negative health outcomes?"
Although many of us have heard that parents are the "anti-drug," a clearly articulated communication theory explaining best practices for parents wishing to prevent their offspring's drug use, or other risky health behaviors, is not currently available. Michelle is working toward developing a "best practices" model for parents that is grounded in research data and is sensitive to both parenting style and personality characteristics of offspring.
Methodologically, she hopes to develop now practices in using ethnographic field methods to capture naturalistic communication data. She believes that naturalistic observational methods are underutilized in our discipline and have great potential for studying communication events as they occur naturally, without intervention.
The goals of the taskforce that align most closely with this work include:
Goal #1: Examining what is effective communication in the health context
Goal #4: Looking at conceptual and methodological innovations in the study of health communication.
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Professor Pamela Kalbfleisch
School of Communication, University of North Dakota, USA
pamelak@und.nodak.edu
Pamela Kalbfleisch is currently the editor of the Journal of Native Aging and Health. She studies communication between doctors and patients, nurses and patients and mentoring relationships in health care.
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Associate Professor Patricia O'Connor
American Studies, Georgetown University, USA.
oconnorp@georgetown.edu
Patricia O'Connor is currently doing discourse analysis of life stories of drug addicts and is interested in hearing from others who my be looking at therapeutic uses of narrative.
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Dr Peter Bull
Department of Psychology, University of York, UNITED KINGDOM
p.bull@psych.york.ac.uk
Peter Bull has supported projects on doctor-patient communication, misconceptions in beliefs about angina and how medical hierarchies limit the possibilities for woman-centered care in midwifery.
With reference to the goals of the taskforce:
(1) Examine what is effective communication in the health context
We have carried out studies of doctor-patient communication (Frederikson & Bull, 1992, 1995).
(2) Delineate the problems currently existing in health communication and the potential impact of these problems.
We have carried out studies of social influence in midwifery, which show how medical hierarchies militate against giving women choice in birthing (Hollins-Martin & Bull, 2004a,b, 2005, 2006).
(3) Outline measures by which communication in the health context may be improved
We carried out a study looking at improving patient communication skills (Frederikson & Bull, 1995).
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Professor Peter MacIntyre
Department of Psychology, Cape Breton University, CANADA
Peter_MacIntyre@cbu.ca
Peter MacIntyre, together with Geoff Carre, does research on searching for health information on the internet and assessing the credibility of that information. They have used computer-based observational methods (recording keystrokes etc) as well as an experiment where they manipulate web site content / structure and assess reactions.
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Professor Rick Iedema
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, AUSTRALIA
R.Iedema@uts.edu.au
Rick Iedema's and his team's research centres on involving clinicians in research into their own practices, or what call (after Bate and Robert in press) experience-based enquiry. Experience-based enquiry deploys methods that include clinicians in sense-making and writing up of research findings and conclusions. These methods produce linguistic, visual (video) and diagrammatic data, and they contain a reflexive feedback component as part of which clinicians can creatively engage with the data. This research, therefore, is not just about establishing what kinds of work are done and how, but also about articulating meanings and feelings that may not be evident to those doing and those studying the work. In that sense, this research is expansionist (Engestrom 1990): it seeks to extend the opportunities and possibilities for action on the part of clinicians and researchers.
Thus far, this research has produced improvements in the areas of pathology laboratory work with new forms of test-order-entry (CPOE; Forsyth 2006), in Intensive Care (with regard to handover practices; Carroll, Iedema & Kerridge under review), in spinal care (with regard to multi-disciplinary team communication practices; Iedema et al 2006a/b; Long et al 2006, 2007) and in infection control (Iedema & Rhodes under review).
Currently Rick and his team are also investigating how reform policies concerning incident investigation and 'open disclosure' processes are being enacted by frontline staff. This work centres on clarifying what the preoccupations of contemporary reform policies mean for staff on the ground, what opportunities and what problems these policies are posing for staff, and how effective these policies are for resolving clinical work process problems.
Our work fits best into goals 1 and 4. 1: we have written extensively about the nature of safe practice in the context of complex care processes, and the emphasis that needs to be placed on heterogeneous communication. 4: our research introduces a number of innovations to the study and improvement of health care services: we engage clinicians in devising alternatives to existing ways of working by arranging iterative reflexive feedback meetings, and we engage clinicians in adopting our research practices by transferring research skills to them and by writing with them about the work we do.
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*Dr Stella Stevens
s.stevens@griffith.edu.au
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Dr Sue McKay
School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA
s.mckay@uq.edu.au
Sue Mackay's research interest is health and media.
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Ms Suellen Hopfer
Department of Communication, Arts and Sciences Pennsylvania State University, USA
sxh343@psu.edu
Suellen Hopfer is a board certified genetic counselor and is interested examining adult genetics-patient-counselor interactions.
With Dr. Parrott at Penn State she has been involved with communication using technologies, specifically interactive (Internet) community maps to assist public health professionals (communication among public health professionals) such as in cancer control activities, to plan interventions by examining spatial planning and communication and how this relates to policy decision-making.
More generally her areas of expertise broadly include: (a) genetics, ethics and risk related research, and (b) Geographic information science (GIS) use (Internet mapping) for collaborative, social meaning production of community resources for public health goals.
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Ms Susan Barone
English Language Centre, Vanderbilt University, USA
susan.m.barone@vanderbilt.edu
Susan Barone sociolinguistic doctoral research looks at the extent to which physicians prompt patients' illness narratives. Taking a discourse analysis approach in investigating a corpus of medical interactions, Susan is identifying narrative dimensions, using Ochs & Capps Narrative Dimensions and Possibilities, and observing whether, to what extent, and/or what types of prompts physicians use to elicit patient narratives. Further, she is exploring how these prompts may shape the co-construction of patient narratives. Susan works with researchers from medicine, advanced practice nursing [nurse practitioners], and global health. The outcomes of her research are to be applied to cross-cultural and global health medical contexts.
Questions being asked:
What is the relationship between physician prompts and the form of patients' accounts of their illnesses?
a. How does the form of the physicians' questions relate to the structure of the patients' accounts/narratives of their illnesses? (e.g. do specific question forms elicit particular narrative components?)
b. How does the vocabulary used in the physicians' questions relate to the patient's accounts/narrative responses: e.g. technical or not?
c. Is the length of the patients' accounts/narratives related to the form of the physicians' questions?
d. What is the overall turn-taking structure of the narrative section of the interaction? (e.g. were the patients' accounts/narratives achieved conjointly with the physician or independently?)
How do physicians evaluate the adequacy of patients’ accounts of their illnesses for purposes of forming working diagnostic assessments and treatment plans?
a. What techniques do physicians perceive as useful in eliciting patient information?
b. From a physician's viewpoint, what additional strategies could be used to elicit a more useful account/narrative?
This research is addressing goals 1 and 3.
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Associate Professor Susan Fussell
Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, USA
sfussell@andrew.cmu.edu
The main focus of Susan Fussell's research is communication between the various medical staff (nurses, anesthesiologists, MDS) in an OR setting, and the role of technology in improving this communication.
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Dr Tony Young
Tony.Young@newcastle.ac.uk
Developing and testing a Code of Practice for effective carer communication with demented people
With colleagues in the UK I am currently developing a Code of Practice (CoP) for effective communication with demented people. This has the aim of helping to improve communication between demented people and their (formal and informal) carers. Although there is a considerable discursive literature on this aspect of health communication, very little of this has influenced guidance given to carers. In addition, very little empirical study has investigated the effectiveness of the various approaches advocated. There is also evidence of much good practice in this regard 'on the ground', but no systematic codification or dissemination of best practice have yet been undertaken.
A process approach to CoP design and dissemination was agreed. In the initial stage, a small team of communication and dementia experts produced a framework. This consists of three levels:
Level 1- agreed broad beliefs and principles about the nature of effective communication with demented people. This will, in the first instance, stimulate debate about the nature of effective communication with demented people, and will also produce a solid conceptual framework for the CoP. This is to inform…
Level 2- Code of Practice Components, consisting of
The "what"- a definition of the component (e.g. what do we mean by "environmental factors" "non-verbal communication", "effective listening", etc)
The "why"- a rationale for including the component in the CoP (e.g. the impacts of environmental factors on communication with demented people)
The "how" - implications for, and specific guidance on, effective communication practices relating to the components
This is to inform :
Level 3 " Carer and others" communication with demented people
For example
* Communication strategies as part of individual care plans for demented people
* Carer guidance and training
* Patient information and guidance
The next stage will consist of wider consultation in order to refine the CoP. This will involve communication and health professions, carers, and demented people themselves. The CoP will then be piloted in different locations, and its effectiveness in facilitating communication gauged in a number of research projects. The CoP will then be disseminated.
The research project satisfies the Taskforce's goals in the following ways:
* it will examine what is effective communication in the context of the care of demented people
* in doing so it will delineate problems currently existing as relating to ineffective communication
* its central purpose is to improve a key aspect of health communication
* it will involve methodological innovation in adopting a consultative process approach to developing the CoP. In devising levels 2 and 3 of the CoP cutting-edge conceptual takes on the nature of dementia and effective communication
will be synthesised for the first time.
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Dr Jenny Fitzgerald
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, AUSTRALIA
j.fitzgerald@psy.uq.edu.au
Health professionals' reactions to patients' emotional distress: The influence of attachment and personality variables in non-intimate relationships.
Can medical students be taught empathic communication for a palliative care setting?
Assessment of clinical communication skills for medical students: how best to make assessment a learning experience.
Contact Information
Email Contacts:
- General Information from Records Officer, Bernadette Watson: bernadette@uq.edu.au
- Membership Information from Treasurer, Maggie Pitts: mpitts@odu.edu
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