Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
they came up with were related to and shaped by the kinds of diffi culties with
interviewing patients that are taken up by students, and are thus individually
tailored. Like what was said about problems, the suggestions appeared
during different discussion parts, and were frequently interrupted by other
activities, such as watching the videotape and formulating problems. The
suggestions were expressed at different levels of specifi city, were modifi ed
during the discussion, and were given from a variety of perspectives - the
students' view, the GP's professional experience, and the group supervisor's
perspective.
In general, the suggestions were aimed at mediating and elaborating on
the response model presented above, and at deepening an understanding of
its practical implications. They not only had the function of solving actual
problems, but also of providing the students with cognitive resources, i.e. a
terminology for describing, analysing and structuring professional medical
talk and interaction.
Discussing the videoed student-patient encounters has the function of
increasing the student's awareness of the structure of medical interviews
and its typical interactive elements. In a general comment during a group
discussion a supervisor summarizes the general communicative ideology and
its functions:
Example 8
SUPERVISOR:
This course is about giving you the chance to learn to get to
know yourself in this situation
encountering the patient
the way you usually act and react
what you feel
what you do
what your strong and weak sides are.
And maybe it is about starting to understand something
'Well sometimes I need to take a break because otherwise I will ask two
questions at the same time and then I get rather lost'
or whatever
the important thing to learn during this course is fi nding your own
style
the way you work.
Being aware of one's communicative behaviour and monitoring the
interview's process requires an increased cognitive effort. A useful aid for
doctors-to-be is a repertoire of procedural heuristics for recognizing and
handling typical interview situations. Such procedural knowledge concerning
the physician's thoughts and refl ections-in-action (Schön 1983) is mainly
extracted from the general practitioner's and the group supervisor's
professional experience. An important aspect is also the patient's assumed
