Abstract
Doctors interrupt patients after an average of eleven seconds, placing significant restraint on doctor/patient communications.This lack of communication, combined with medical bias, leads to underdiagnosis and undertreatment of groups such as women, racial minorities, obese people, and those with physical and mental disabilities.The article is framed by the case of Brian Sinclair, an Indigenous Canadian who died of an easily treatable condition after being ignored at a Winnipeg E.R. Drawing on the limited studies in medical rhetoric and health communications, the author examines whether patients can do anything to avoid being similarly ignored by medical professionals.The author theorizes that establishing an educated ethos, or bringing a companion who processes such an ethos, may positively impact doctors’ willingness to listen. The article also explores the possible influence of Burkean rhetorical identification in doctor/patient communications. Patients feel they receive better treatment from doctors of their own ethnicity, suggesting that the extent doctors identify with patients’ ethnicity may affect communications. However the same does not hold true for gender and age: female doctors and younger doctors tend to listen to all patients more attentively than older, male doctors do, regardless of the patient’s gender or age.
Recommended Citation
Corry, M. Shivaun
(2024)
"How to Talk so that Doctors will Listen,"
Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine: Vol. 9:
Iss.
1, Article 7.
Available at:
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/vol9/iss1/7