Medical Professional-Patient Communication in Outpatient Department of Kotebe Health Center: A Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Study
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Date
2012-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Doctor and patient communication is one of the interpersonal communications and is centre for
clinical function in building a therapeutic doctor and patient relationship, which is the heart and
art of medicine. Therefore, it is important in the delivery of high-quality health care. But,
patients complain that doctors are not willing to listen to them, do not answer their questions or
inform them properly, they are authoritative and unhelpful. Doctors, on the other hand, criticize
their patients for not following their advice.
Abstract
The study focused on Outpatient department of Kotebe Health center, which is under Yeka sub
city that provides primary health care for the general population which holds two doctors, four
health officers, twenty three nurses and their patients. That is the communication between
medical professional and patient from sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects respectively. The
first, contemplates the use of terminology, register, turn taking, solidarity and status, language
and group membership, and code switching in language. The second, deals with the use of
language in social context and emphasize the ‘functionality’ of utterances performed in medical
contexts of interaction which attempts to address the speech act theory, the maxims and the
paralinguistic feature of the language.
The methodology used to collect the data is techniques such as interview; observations and
questionnaires. The qualitative data which was found from the interactions and quantitative data
found from questionnaires were analyzed and tried to inspect the two questions; those are
mentioned above. Moreover, the study shows both interlocutors’ code switch from Amharic and
to English and used terminologies during communication which has contribution for
miscommunication and clarification. Variables such as age, gender, educational status etc. has
big part in the interaction of the medical communication.
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Keywords
Kotebe Health Center