Introduction

Have you ever considered the place of language in medical settings? When you go to a doctor’s surgery, hospital, health centre or any healthcare setting and consult with a medical practitioner, who initiates the conversation? How do you address each other? And how formal or informal is the language used?

This week you’ll look at an important aspect of the language of health communication: language used by medical practitioners such as doctors, nurses within their regular clinical practice.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• understand some of the ways in which clinical consultation is managed, and how shared meaning is negotiated in doctor-patient dialogues
• see how conversation analysis is helpful in exploring oral communication
• try out the different stages in a medical consultation.