Communication for Health Professionals

pick six of the following questions and answer each thoroughly but succinctly. Please put them in numerical order. Clearly label each question by question number and submit in a Word attachment through Isidore. All responses should be typed, double-spaced. Please make sure that you have enough to say about any particular question before you decide to answer it.

1. If one were observing and critiquing a health care provider-patient interaction, what behaviors would it be important to observe? What does it mean to also look at “missed opportunities” during such an observation? Please think about the things that you observed in your first observation analysis and the behaviors that were noted on the form accompanying that assignment.

2. In what ways can culture impact health communication, particularly health care outcomes? Consider the culture of both the provider and the patient/family. What are the stages in developing cultural competence? How can one become more culturally competent? How does your own cultural programming impact health communication? What ethical issues are related to health communication?

3. Based on your personal and professional experiences, identify the most serious and consistent communication problems that you have observed. Please give specific examples.

4. What barriers exist to the implementation of the kinds of communicative behaviors that have been advocated in the chapters in the text that we have read so far? Again, please give specific examples.

5. How do providers and patients co-create the relationship between the two of them? Give examples of the dyadic nature of communication that make apparent the interactive role of each participant and of their communicative behavior.

6. Please take a look at the following video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW-ZRo6GJnA Critique it utilizing everything that you have read about so far this semester, including presentation and analysis of what is done well and what is not done well. Analyze the behavior of both the health care provider and the patient. In addition to analyzing what is done, please also focus on what is NOT done well and what opportunities are missed.

7. What do we know about the history of health care in the US that influences health communication today?

8. What do we know about health care pedagogy that influences our understanding of health communication? In particular, what do we know about physician vs nursing culture/pedagogy and how they affect health communication?

9. How is communication used to build relationships in health care? What verbal and nonverbal competencies are especially important in health care? What role do narratives play in understanding health communication?

10. What is health literacy and how does it affect health communication? What demographic and SES variables impact health communication? How does this relate to stereotypes and marginalized populations?

11. How does capitalism and the business model impact how health communication operates in the US today? What organizational communication theories are particularly relevant to our understanding of health care organizations and the communication that occurs within them?