Health care professionals' and patients' communication via telehealth
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Negotiating conversation and interaction through videoconferencing in speech language therapy: A conversation analytic study
IRAS ID
194998
Contact name
David Dalley
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aberystwyth University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 31 days
Research summary
Over the past 40 years, telehealth technologies have been introduced into a variety of domains of health-care. These technologies have a significant impact for individuals and communities whom are situated in rural areas and therefore have difficulties accessing health-care services, be they standardised or specialist. Alongside this, an important part of the provision of health-care services is the relationship between that of the professional and patient. Previous studies have demonstrated the impact of the interaction between health-care providers and patients on patients understanding of medical information, their perception of their own disease and their quality of life. This is particularly relevant in speech language therapy, where conversation may already be challenging and differing methods of communication maybe required. The introduction of telehealth into health-care provider-patient interaction adds an additional dynamic in which these interactions occur. However, limited research has explored how conversations are negotiated when delivered via telehealth; especially in challenging contexts such as speech and language therapy.
This study explores the how communication and interactions between speech and language therapists and patients are negotiated when sessions are delivered via telehealth. The proposed study will use 20 hours of naturalistic audio-visual recordings of an existing speech language telehealth service to analyse the talk and non-verbal gestures between the therapist and consenting patients through conversation analysis. Conversation analysis is concerned with the structural aspects of talk including pauses, overlapping talk, intonation, laughter and non-verbal gestures. The analysis will focus on how talk can open up or shut down conversation, how gestures are used to communicate challenging information and how delays and pauses are managed.REC name
Wales REC 7
REC reference
16/WA/0106
Date of REC Opinion
23 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion