Rhetoric of health and medicine. The rhetoric of health and medicine is an academic discipline concerning language and symbols in health and medicine. Through methods such as content analysis, survey methodology, and usability testing, researchers in this sphere recognize the importance of communication to successful healthcare. In the 1. 98. 0s the field shifted when rhetorical critics like Martha Solomon and Charles Anderson began analyzing texts on biomedicine. Solomon analyzed the rhetoric used in medical reports during the Tuskegee Syphilis Project, while Anderson examined the writings of surgeon Richard Selzer to comment on the rhetoric of surgery. Rhetorical scholar Celeste Condit raised questions about the historical and rhetorical dimensions of issues like abortion and genetics in works such as 1. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. Scholars in the field also began a biennial symposium, Discourses of Health and Medicine, in 2. Neurorhetoric, the study of how language is used in the creation, distribution, and reception of science about the brain, has recently become an important topic in medical rhetoric and composition studies, as well as in popular science publications targeted at non- scientists. The H& P includes a Subject, Objective, Assessment, and Plan (SOAP note), which summarizes the patient.
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2. Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which mandates that health providers transition from handwritten (typed) patient narratives to electronic patient narratives in forms such as the electronic medical record (EMR) or the electronic health record (EHR). Scholars further explore alternative medical practitioners. John Gregory began to emphasize patient- physician communication by introducing the idea of preventative care for . This law was intended to assure patients that their wishes would be considered in treatment decision- making. Such opportunities fall into two broadly defined categories: service and advocacy. Service. This might mean the communicator is paid to assist with a task like grant writing, editing, or authoring a medical document. Medical transcriptionists, represented by the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI), provide another form of professional communication in medical discourse. The AHDI is the world. By ensuring documentation. Wooley says that professional writers must adhere to ethical guidelines that ghostwriters may not be expected to follow. While authors control their content when working with a professional medical writer, Wooley says that ghostwriters may try to take control of the content away from the author and hide certain facts, such as where a project. This type of health communication enables the public to understand a health issue more thoroughly, providing them with the tools necessary to challenge or change existing power structures within their own communities. Advocacy is often associated with risk communication, the process of explaining natural disasters, human- made hazards, and behavioral practices to the public in a way they can understand. 2000 Rhetoric Society Of America Conference. Theorists such as Don Nutbeam propose a need for advocacy and say that health literacy, or people. In response to this issue, Jeffrey T. Michele Simmons propose that technical communicators can provide advocacy because they have both good writing skills and an ability to understand and convey information to patients. These parts are often referred to as either rhetorical concepts or rhetorical principles. Rhetorical concepts can be seen as tools of the trade that allow rhetoricians to effectively communicate in a way that is most likely to persuade readers and audiences of the messages and meanings intended by the rhetorician. Rhetorical concepts are an important part of what makes an argument persuasive, and all effective arguments inherently contain them. Rhetoric Society of America (RSA). Concerns about Kingship in Macbeth.” 2010 Conference of the American/Popular. Program in Writing and Rhetoric. Leadership Conference; Communicating Your Science. Social Media; Media; Home. Review the 2016 Online Program. Crop Science Society of America. The Rhetoric Society of America. Conference of ISHR brings together several. Rhetorical concepts help rhetoricians convey information that would otherwise be unascertainable by the audience, which is especially important for topics that carry heavy implications, such as the complications that often follow complex medical and health needs. Often providing emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity, they can be used to explain complex, unknown topics to readers and audiences in a way that makes them easier for the reader to understand. When a public health campaign . Notable work in this area has been done by Judy Segal, who chronicled the impact of five biomedical metaphors in her book Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine, including . Where some figures of speech can help to lend meaning or understanding to medical and scientific communication, hyperbole often obscures the truth by exaggerating it, which can have detrimental and even deadly results. Headaches, for example, can occasionally be described by patients as feeling as if their . Furthermore, doctors and scientists need to be especially aware of the negative implications that hyperbole can have in medical discourses. As Joseph Loscalzo points out in his article Clinical Trials in Cardiovascular Medicine in an Era of Marginal Benefit, Bias, and Hyperbole, the use of hyperbole by investigators during medical trials can . One party may wish to argue the moral necessity of health care reform while the other party wishes to argue that health care reform is economically infeasible. Until both parties agree on the issue at hand (whether it be the economic or moral considerations of health care reform), resolution of the argument cannot take place. Once the parties have agreed on the issue at hand, they have achieved rhetorical stasis. The idea of first agreeing to the issue at hand is central to any discussion between rational people. One example of how stasis can apply to health and medical rhetoric is provided in a recent article by Christa Teston and Scott Graham. These researchers applied the rhetorical concept of stasis to medical discourse by reviewing the FDA discussion on Avastin as a treatment for metastaticbreast cancer. They concluded that the absence of stasis resulted in miscommunication between the interested parties. The FDA could have achieved stasis, these authors conclude, by first reaching consensus on the following questions: What counts as clinical benefit? What kinds of evidence would be deemed meaningful? Initially introduced by Aristotle in On Rhetoric, the appeals focus on three ways to persuade your audience: by appealing to the character of the speaker (ethos), the emotions of the audience (pathos), or the logic/truth of the argument itself (logos). As Sarah Bigi explains in her article The Persuasive Role of Ethos in doctor- patient Interactions, . If a doctor does not seem credible than a patient is unlikely to follow their instructions or diagnosis, which can lead to further health complications down the line. Pathos is an appeal to the audience. The speaker may use pathos in a multitude of ways; however, in terms of the rhetoric of health and medicine, two particular emotions stand out: fear and hope. When doctors appeal to fear it is not done so lightly. Doctors have to decide if instilling fear in their patient is the right tactic for persuading their patients to agree with the physician. For instance, if a patient has diabetes and is likely to lose a toe or foot if they do not change the way they treat their condition, it is up to the doctor to decide when to stop telling their patient that . In some cases, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the act of presenting this positive emotional state can actually create a positive result in itself. Logos is logical appeal or the simulation of it. It is normally used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's claims or thesis. It is important to health and medicine communications because patients want to know which treatments work best, and they want the scientific data to prove it. Having an appeal to logic also enhances ethos because information makes the speaker look knowledgeable and prepared to his or her audience. However, the data can be confusing and thus confuse the audience. So, the doctor has to make sure to leverage the appeals to best persuade their patients. Doctors must decide how many facts and figures are appropriate to persuade an audience of the factual basis of the argument while portraying themselves as a credible speaker and playing to the right emotional state of their patient- -- all to get the patient to follow the doctor. Scholars in the field apply these techniques to understand how and for what reasons health and medical communication is accomplished. Content analysis. Audience surveys are often used to determine if a target audience understands a given set of health or medical instructions. The results help researchers adjust these instructions and assist audiences in achieving functional health literacy. This sort of research identifies gaps for public health agencies to address in their communications. Usability testing. This practice is particularly important when content creators are not themselves part of their target audience, as is often the case for communications that address vulnerable communities such as senior citizens. Evaluations by experts in other fields, such as design or user experience, are also employed. References. Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2. Print.^Derkatch, Colleen and Judy Segal (2. University of Toronto Medical Journal. Western Journal of Speech Communication. Richard Selzer and the Rhetoric of Surgery. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 9. 78- 0- 8. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. University of Illinois Press. The Meanings of the Gene: Public Debates about Human Heredity. University of Wisconsin Press. Rhetoricians of Health and Medicine. Rhetoricians of Health and Medicine. Risky Rhetoric: AIDS and the Cultural Practices of HIV Testing. Southern Illinois University Press.
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