Using Authentic Doctor-Patient Consultations in Improving Communication Skills

This study investigates the effect of an instructional design for medical Chinese, which incorporates research findings from Conversation Analysis (CA) and uses authentic doctor-patient consultations in primary-care visits as teaching materials. The goal of the instruction is to develop students' interpersonal communicative competence in medical settings, especially doctor-patient consultations. Twelve pre-med college students in the course "Chinese for Healthcare Professions" participated in this study. They first participated in five 50-min classes using a chapter from a medical Chinese textbook. Then, they participated in an additional set of five 50-min instructional sessions introducing CA-informed instruction using authentic consultations. The pedagogical effects were measured with paired roleplays administered at three different times: at the beginning of the course, after the regular instruction sessions, and, finally, after the CA-informed instructional period. The results show that the CA-informed instruction for using authentic doctor-patient consultations has a positive effect on improving students' communicative performance in simulated medical settings.