Learning to talk and talking about talk - Medical Technologies and the Life World - page 37

Talking about professional medical talk and especially one's own
communicative style in the professional role requires a certain awareness
of language and interaction that most students do not possess from the
beginning, but which they acquire during the group discussions.
Classifying one's own interactive actions as an affective response or as
interrupting the patient's story and taking responsibility for the interview's
progress, time schedule and talk in a self-monitoring way - these are the
skills that are acquired from training and refl ection. The group setting and
the discussion allow the adoption and development of a common language
to describe communicative processes and to apply it to oneself - and this may
be the main difference between this situation and mere individual bedside
training and unrefl ected professional experience.
Above all, learning to talk and interact with patients in modern medicine
involves learning to be self-refl ective and being able to refl ect together with
colleagues. This includes being able to look at video recordings of one's own
and others' interactions with patients, and being able to analyse, discuss and
contribute suggestions and helpful refl ections in a discussion. Through this
process a representation of a prescribed style of doctoring and of being a
doctor is presented, learned and reproduced. Armstrong writes that it is 'the
creation of a doctor, by a doctor, for view by other doctors' (2002: 169).
The doctor becomes a true professional in the eye of the other doctor - less
so in the eye of the patient.
Acknowledgment
Antje Lumma's work on this chapter has been supported by a grant from the
Swedish Research Council.
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