John Benjamins Publishing Company
Professional roles in a medical telephone helpline
Abstract
This paper deals with the professional roles of medical advisors working in a medical help line. The analysis focuses on telephone calls with questions about the swine flu epidemic in 2009. A number of calls have been collected from the help line database and analyzed with the purpose of examining the advisors’ role shifts and adaption to the changes of the situation and the callers’ needs. This study is mainly instructed by the concept of hybridity as a main characteristic of counseling as an interaction type. Different sub-types, i.e. interaction formats, have been identified, connected to the shifting contexts of the call. Communicative tasks performed during a call can, to some degree, be regarded as typical subtypes in a modern medical help line. Phenomena such as hybridity and role shifts are thus viewed as reflections of the participants’ roles and their adaption to context, and as such a necessary trait of an advisor’s professional communicative competence.
Abstract
This paper deals with the professional roles of medical advisors working in a medical help line. The analysis focuses on telephone calls with questions about the swine flu epidemic in 2009. A number of calls have been collected from the help line database and analyzed with the purpose of examining the advisors’ role shifts and adaption to the changes of the situation and the callers’ needs. This study is mainly instructed by the concept of hybridity as a main characteristic of counseling as an interaction type. Different sub-types, i.e. interaction formats, have been identified, connected to the shifting contexts of the call. Communicative tasks performed during a call can, to some degree, be regarded as typical subtypes in a modern medical help line. Phenomena such as hybridity and role shifts are thus viewed as reflections of the participants’ roles and their adaption to context, and as such a necessary trait of an advisor’s professional communicative competence.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Discourses of helping professions 1
- How practitioners deal with their clients' "off-track" talk 13
- Empathic practices in client-centred psychotherapies 33
- The interactional accomplishment of feelings-talk in psychotherapy and executive coaching 59
- “Making one’s path while walking with a clear head” 91
- Form, function and particularities of discursive practices in one-on-one supervision in Germany 123
- "I mean is that right?" 157
- Professional roles in a medical telephone helpline 179
- Anticipatory reactions 205
- “Doctor vs. patient” 227
- Time pressure and digressive speech patterns in doctor-patient consultations 257
- Neurologists' approaches to making psychosocial attributions in patients with functional neurological symptoms 289
- Name index 315
- Subject index 319
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Discourses of helping professions 1
- How practitioners deal with their clients' "off-track" talk 13
- Empathic practices in client-centred psychotherapies 33
- The interactional accomplishment of feelings-talk in psychotherapy and executive coaching 59
- “Making one’s path while walking with a clear head” 91
- Form, function and particularities of discursive practices in one-on-one supervision in Germany 123
- "I mean is that right?" 157
- Professional roles in a medical telephone helpline 179
- Anticipatory reactions 205
- “Doctor vs. patient” 227
- Time pressure and digressive speech patterns in doctor-patient consultations 257
- Neurologists' approaches to making psychosocial attributions in patients with functional neurological symptoms 289
- Name index 315
- Subject index 319
