This article explores communicative practices surrounding how nurses, patients and family members engage when talking about death and dying, based on study conducted in a province in northern Thailand. Data were collected from three environments: a district hospital (nine cases), district public health centres (four cases), and in patients’ homes (27 cases). Fourteen nurses, 40 patients and 24 family members gave written consent for participation. Direct observation and in-depth interviews were used for supplementary data collection, and 40 counselling sessions were recorded on video. The raw data were analysed using Conversation Analysis. The study found that Thai counselling is asymmetrical. Nurses initiated the topic of death by referring to the death of a third person – a dead patient – with the use of clues and via list-construction. As most Thai people are oriented to Buddhism, religious support is selected for discussing this sensitive topic, and nurses also use Buddhism and list-construction to help their clients confront uncertain futures. However, Buddhism is not brought into discussion on its own, but combined with other techniques such as the use of euphemisms or concern and care for others.

This is a study of how the stories of Peranakan culture in Thailand's Andaman cluster provinces are told. Utilising Berlo’s communication model as the primary research framework, this research elaborates on how the Peranakan culture’s stories are told and how these stories help define the Thai Peranakan cultural identity. The findings indicated that there is a lack of storytellers in the new Peranakan culture to continue and drive culture preservation (sender), stories presented did not contain subject matter that points to the real identity of Peranakan culture (message), the channels of storytelling are not continuous and diverse enough (channel) and the awareness of Peranakan culture is limited (receiver). The Peranakan cultural identity, meanwhile, was elaborated in two ways; the history of the Peranakans and the Peranakans' way of life. It was also discovered that the Andaman cluster province was not where the Peranakan’s culture was originally constructed. Instead it was brought to Andaman by Chinese who were trading, living or studying in Malacca or Penang at that time. These Peranakan’s cultural identity is an assimilation of Chinese, Malay, European, and Thai cultures, as evident in Peranakan food, clothes, architecture, and beliefs and traditions. Keywords: Peranakan, Baba, Andaman cluster, storytelling, cultural identity.

Background: This study explores greeting exchanges in stroke care, in particular the use of the ‘wai’ gesture. Method: Seventeen patients with Broca’s aphasia, some family members, six nurses from district public health centers, and four nurses from a district hospital in northern Thailand were given written consent forms for participation. Thirty counseling sessions were video-recorded in patients’ homes and analyzed using conversation analysis. Direct observation and in-depth interview were also used for supplementary data collection. Results: These showed a patient’s daughter helping her to accomplish a greeting. She was encouraged to use one hand to raise the other hand up. Another patient was only able to raise one hand to conduct the normal ‘wai,’ a potential cause of embarrassment for the patient, as the greeting is always formed by putting the two palms of the hands together. The nurse encouraged him to perform the greeting using one hand through different questions and statements. Discussion and conclusion: While the ‘wai’ gesture and the spoken greeting ‘sawatdi’ used for social functions plays an important role in stroke counseling, the nursing guidelines in the Barthel Index excluded them in the section on non-verbal communication assessment. This article suggests that they should be taken into account, in order to improve the nursing guidelines to fit the Thai context.

The aim of this study was to explore two specific forms of questioning regarding the topic of eating during stroke care in Thailand. The data consist of conversations between nurses and patients with aphasia which were video-recorded in the patients’ homes and analysed using conversation analysis. The following two forms of questioning were developed by the six nurses involved, partially from the Thai Barthel Index, to invite patients to contribute to conversations: ‘Who prepares and brings food for you?’ and ‘What did you eat with the rice?’. These forms of questioning also helped to identify interactional adaptation amongst patients. Patients used gestures, repair and word-filling, whereas nurses offered candidate guessing and understanding to achieve aphasic interaction. This study adds to the knowledge on aphasic interaction that can be used in drafting guidelines, and in training sessions and demonstrations to staff concerned with improving clinical tasks in the Thai context.