Content and Process in Medical Communication
Content and Process in Medical Communication

Summary/Abstract: According to twentieth-century developments in the field of medical communication, there are two aspects which need to be taught: content and process. Usually, it is far more intuitive and even necessary to focus on the content of medical communication, leaving process aside. However, recent research shows that emphasizing process leads to improved medical care and professionalism in the physician-patient relationship, which is always dependent on non-technical factors such as academic culture, the particular view on medicine that a society has, and the difference between disease, the hard scientific data, and illness, the patient’s individual and social experience of disease. This paper explores the various ways in which content and process can be combined in the Medical English class with a specific focus on the Calgary-Cambridge framework. New approaches have been developed in recent years, but they should be balanced by a straightforward teaching of the social, political, historical, and medical-technical structures at play in contemporary practice.

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