Analyzing conversations between Polish patients and doctors: a sketch of methodology and some initial results
Analyzing conversations between Polish patients and doctors: a sketch of methodology and some initial results

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents a brief methodological sketch of conversation analysis, a qualitative methodof analyzing spoken materials and demonstrates the usability of this method for analyzing conversations between doctors and patients in the context of Polish healthcare. In what follows I first outline the basic assumptions of conversation analysis that are of particular relevance for this paper. Next, I provide a brief illustration of the kind of insights that conversation analytic examination of interactional materials can offer. Accordingly, I focus on particular type of action– questions, and look at two particular dimensions of question delivery formats in Polish medical communication. In the remainder of the paper I review a number of past and present studies on medical communication and conclude with some general observations on the relevance of analyzing the organization of individual doctor–patient encounters for the overall study of medical communication.

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