A Contrastive Study On The Delivery Of Diagnoses In Clinical Interactions By American And Chinese Doctors

Scholars both at home and abroad have made great contributions to the study of the doctor-patient relationship as well as the ways to deliver the diagnoses. Nevertheless, some aspects are in need of improvement. For example, in some researches, only some doctors in a particular hospital are chosen, whose words are adopted as the oral material by recording, while the relation between the doctors' language features and their nationalities and gender are often ignored. In addition, the qualitative approach is mainly adopted, which might add some subjectivity to their researches.The paper attempts to test the following four hypotheses. First, differences do exist when the doctors deliver the diagnoses to the different patients. Second, doctors will usually deliver the diagnoses to the patients euphemistically when treating the patients with serious diseases or incurable diseases. Third, doctors'gender will have an influence on the choices of strategies to deliver the diagnoses to the patients. Finally, American doctors are different from Chinese doctors in delivering the diagnoses to the patients. The originality of this paper lies in its adoption of pragmatic theories in the study of the different strategies used by the American doctors and Chinese doctors when they treat the seven kinds of patients through the collaboration of qualitative and quantitative approaches.In order to prove the above hypotheses, the methods of the questionnaire and the interview are adopted. First, with reference to classification of the diseases in the hospital and the facts obtained in the pretest, seven types of the diseases are selected for the investigation in the form of a questionnaire. Second, in accordance with the data collected from the valid questionnaires accomplished by 40 doctors working at the University of Chicago Medical Central and 40 doctors working at the Hospital of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine as well as the interviews finished by 10 doctors among them, the paper focuses itself on the contrastive study of the delivery of diagnoses in clinical interactions by American and Chinese doctors. Meanwhile, the variables like the doctors'gender and nationality and the patients' age are observed to see their influence on the choices of strategies for the doctors to deliver the diagnoses to the patients. Finally, the data collected are analyzed through the soft ware SPSS 16 before differences between American doctors and Chinese doctors are presented.The findings drawn from the contrastive study of the delivery of diagnoses in clinical interactions by American and Chinese doctors show that nationality and gender do play roles in conveying the diagnoses. Firstly, as far as the nationality is concerned, compared with American doctors, Chinese doctors are more euphemistic in clinical interactions. Secondly, in the aspect of gender, the female doctors are more euphemistic than the male doctors. Thirdly, doctors usually convey the diagnoses to different patients in different ways. Finally both of these two groups of subjects have something in common:facing the children patients, they deliver the diagnoses to their families; treating the patients with incurable diseases, both of the subjects will convey the diagnoses euphemistically to the patients; for the patients with serious and urgent diseases, infectious diseases, or common diseases, they usually deliver the diagnoses directly, whether to the patients themselves or their families.Harmonious doctor-patient relationship is not only the fundamental element to ensure the good treatment but also the core of building harmonious society. It is hoped that doctors should pay more attention to their communication skills with patients. By using the suitable ways to convey the diagnostic news, doctors will make a harmonious doctor-patient relationship. In addition, this thesis compares the differences in the delivery of diagnoses between American doctors and Chinese doctors, which is expected to shed some fresh light on the issue of improving Chinese doctors and medical students'communication skills under Globalized circumstances.The paper is composed of six chapters. ChapterⅠis a brief introduction to the whole thesis. ChapterⅡis a review of the study relevant to the delivery of diagnoses in clinical interactions in several aspects as well as the study relevant to language behavior and gender. ChapterⅢis a review of the framework theories. ChapterⅣ concentrates on the details regarding the methods of collecting and transcribing the data. ChapterⅤmakes an analysis of the major findings of the experiment by contrasting American and Chinese doctors in delivering the diagnoses to the patients. ChapterⅥserves as a summary of the research.