Relationship building in oncological doctor-patient interaction

Abstract

This paper studies practices of relationship building between oncologists and their patients during consultations when a diagnosis of malignancy is communicated. The analysis – with its focus on physicians’ uses of terms of address – aims to provide a better understanding of the sequential construction of the doctor-patient relationship in highly sensitive consultations. In our data, oncologists frequently address their patients by name – even when recipiency is not at issue. They use this communicative resource to contextualize the heightened attention they are giving their patients and to lend the interaction a more personal quality. Drawing on methods of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, I will show that relationship building is an ongoing task doctors are confronted with in the process of interactions.

Innovative studies in organized helping: Transforming relations, emotions and referents through sequentially structured practices

“…Ribeiro et al, 2013, p. 295). Scarvaglieri et al (2022a), for example, dedicate an entire anthology to the shaping of relationships in helping interactions, in which different helping formats are examined from the point of view of the co-construction of relationships, e.g., doctor-patient conversations (Džanko, 2022;Günthner, 2022;Kuna and Scarvaglieri, 2022;, psychotherapy (Buchholz, 2022;Guxholli et al, 2022;Kabatnik et al, 2022;Muntigl, 2022;Pawelczyk and Faccio, 2022), coaching , as well as newer helping formats in the social web, such as support through illness-related forums in social media (Kabatnik, 2022). The research focuses there, for example, on the constitution of a sense of community between psychotherapist and patient (Buchholz, 2022), the face-threatening question What about you in psychotherapy (Guxholli et al, 2022) or semi-responsive answers .…”

“Because he was disgusting”: transforming relations through positioning in messenger-supported group psychotherapy

“…Ribeiro et al, 2013, p. 295). Scarvaglieri et al (2022a), for example, dedicate an entire anthology to the shaping of relationships in helping interactions, in which different helping formats are examined from the point of view of the co-construction of relationships, e.g., doctor-patient conversations (Džanko, 2022;Günthner, 2022;Kuna and Scarvaglieri, 2022;Thurnherr, 2022), psychotherapy (Buchholz, 2022;Guxholli et al, 2022;Kabatnik et al, 2022;Muntigl, 2022;Pawelczyk and Faccio, 2022), coaching (Graf and Jautz, 2022;Winkler, 2022), as well as newer helping formats in the social web, such as support through illness-related forums in social media (Kabatnik, 2022). The research focuses there, for example, on the constitution of a sense of community between psychotherapist and patient (Buchholz, 2022), the face-threatening question What about you in psychotherapy (Guxholli et al, 2022) or semi-responsive answers (Winkler, 2022).…”