A Conversation Analysis Of Sensitive Talk In Clinic Interaction

Nowadays, the relationship between the doctor and the patient in China is not so harmonious and medical disputes often occur. One of the main reasons is that the doctor-patient communication is not satisfactory enough, especially on the sensitive topics. Researchers in the field of medicine have realized that and conducted a large quantity of studies mainly on doctor-patient relationship and doctor's language skills in communication with the patient. Most of the studies are based on their experience or observation, which is relatively subjective and general. This study, however, investigates one of the aspects of clinic interaction:the sensitive talk in Chinese clinical interviews by the approach of conversation analysis, which is more specific and objective, aiming at helping people understand the doctor-patient interaction more deeply and making contributions to the betterment of doctor-patient relationship. As we know, the communication between the doctor and the patient is not balanced, and the doctor has power to dominate the whole conversation, so the patient plays a passive role in the talk, which leads to some obstruction of communication. And when the topics of conversations are sensitive, the communication is becoming less fluent, and the patient is not willing to cooperate with the doctor or refuses to answer the questions, which causes some impacts on the conversation and is not favorable for the diagnosis of the diseases. Based on the tape-recordings and transcriptions of naturally occurring doctor-patient conversations in Chinese outpatient clinics, this thesis analyses some data from different topics of sensitive talk, summarizes the respective sequence patterns and use the concepts and knowledge of sociology and social psychology to explain some features of such conversations, hoping to find some common characters in order to improve and better the relationship between the doctor and the patient, which can promote the diagnosis of the diseases. At the end of this thesis, the author poses the limitations of the present study and the suggestions for future research.