A Study On Voice And Power In Doctor-Patient Talks

The doctor-patient relationship has aroused widespread attention from all circlesaround the world since the doctor-patient communication in the internationalcommunity has been officially established as a major area of research in the1970s. Itis generally regarded as an unequal relationship because doctors assert absolutedominance over patients and patients are subordinated to doctors. Doctor-patientrelationship is established during their communication, thus, the talk between doctorsand patients can reflect their relationship directly.A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches has been applied in thisresearch to analyze the data recorded with MP3from Guangan’men Hospital, ChinaAcademy of Chinese Medical Sciences. Adopting the currently popular theories ofpower and voice, with the purpose of analyzing the language features of thedoctor-patient talk,12doctors (6females and6males) and21patients (12femalesand10males) in9clinics are involved in the study, and33consultations aretranscribed with discourse analysis. The aim of this research is to display thecharacteristics of doctors and patients’ voice, to investigate the relationship betweentheir voices and power and to enlighten doctors and patients. This study plays asignificant role in establishing a harmonious doctor-patient relationship andencouraging more effective diagnosis and treatment.Some general findings have been made from the present study.(1) Doctor’s voices can be categorized as the voice of doctor, the voice ofeducator and the voice of fellow human; patient’s voices can be divided into the voiceof health-related storytelling, the voice of competence, the voice of socialcommunication and the voice of initiator. Among the three voices,42.8%is the voiceof educator and37.4%is the voice of doctor.(2) The power is usually exerted by means of questions and interruptions, andalso the use of address terms and medical terms.(3) Power and voice are interlinked in the doctor-patient talk. When doctors use the voice of doctor or the voice of educator, they hold the power; on the contrary,patients hold power when they use the voice of competence.(4) Three major voice patterns are found in the doctor-patient talk. The dynamicpower relation caused by the shift of voices varies with the change of voice patternsand the dynamic power relations closely link to some social variables such as gender,age, education and occupation.Such findings reveal the characteristics of the doctor-patient talks which will beof value to promote more effective diagnosis and to the establishment of harmony,equality of the doctor-patient talk.