Health communication extends from patient-doctor interactions and inter-professional encounters to media campaigns and patient-patient interactions on social media. While research has shown that effective communication is an indispensable part of delivering quality healthcare, technological advances in modes of communication, together with increasingly complex social environments, are presenting professionals and patients alike with multiple challenges. This course pursues two main interrelated objectives. First, it is aimed at introducing the students to one specific area of inquiry within the so-called ‘applied linguistics of professions’ (Sarangi, 2005). The students will learn about different analytical approaches to healthcare communication, namely micro- and macro-perspectives on the analyses of spoken and written discourse data. Second, it is intended as a course with a more ‘practical’ aim of developing the students’ understanding that effective health communication strategies may significantly improve the healthcare quality and outcomes. To achieve these two objectives, the students will engage with authentic data from a variety of healthcare sites (from primary care encounters to specialist clinics to genetic counseling) to examine some critical issues of health communication such as patient-centeredness and shared decision-making between healthcare professionals and patients; delivery of accurate and accessible healthcare information; communicating health risk and uncertainty. Students will also undertake group work using health communication data that they select for themselves. 

A list of required and recommended readings will be provided in class.