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Rapport, Empathy and Professional Identity: Some Challenges for International Medical Graduates Speaking English as a Second or Foreign Language

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Multilingual Healthcare

Part of the book series: FOM-Edition ((INTSE))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the communicative challenges faced by international medical graduates (IMGs; doctors from non-English speaking backgrounds who have trained in different medical cultures) as they enact their professional roles in English within Australia. We concentrate on how differences in their interaction with patients may relate to their awareness and control of pragmatic features in English and to different expectations of patient-centred care in medical encounters across cultures. We draw on four data sets: interviews with international medical scholars; audio-recordings of authentic, surgical consultations and video-recordings of simulated doctor-patient interactions conducted for training purposes and mock exams. Using techniques from applied linguistics and discourse analysis we analyse linguistic and other communicative means used to establish rapport and empathy within an Australian context of patient-centred care. We show that sociopragmatic differences across cultures in doctor-patient roles, relationships and expectations as well as pragmalinguistic differences across languages and cultures can impact on how IMGs can successfully portray their professional identity and also how approachable and caring they appear to their patients before considering the implications for professional practice.

The authors wish to thank colleagues Peter Roger and Margo Lecompte, Beth Mulligan, Kathryn Ogden, Kim Rooney and Brooke Sheldon.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Australian Medical Council (AMC) tests required for registration are the Multiple Choice Question exam and the AMC clinical examination.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ANU Institute for Communication in Health Care, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Maria R. Dahm

  2. Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Lynda Yates

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  1. Maria R. Dahm
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  2. Lynda Yates
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Correspondence to Maria R. Dahm .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. LCC – Department Angewandte Linguistik, ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, Winterthur, Switzerland

    Christiane Hohenstein

  2. FOM Hochschule für Oekonomie & Management, Hamburg, Germany

    Magdalène Lévy-Tödter

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Dahm, M.R., Yates, L. (2020). Rapport, Empathy and Professional Identity: Some Challenges for International Medical Graduates Speaking English as a Second or Foreign Language. In: Hohenstein, C., Lévy-Tödter, M. (eds) Multilingual Healthcare. FOM-Edition(). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27120-6_9

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