E4: How Are You Doing? Diagnosing Health Talk

Title: Languaging in Hampton Roads

Episode 4 : ‘How’re you doing?’: Diagnosing Health Talk

Hosts: Jill Winkowski and Prue Salasky

Date: April 26, 2024

Length: 24:22

Publication Frequency: Fourth Friday of each month

Conversations between medical providers and patients have their own special style and context-driven meaning. In this episode, co-hosts Jill Winkowski and Prue Salasky explore the ways providers in Hampton Roads  implement patient-centered care through their choice of questions, framing, and expression of empathy.

They interview Dr. Staci Defibaugh, associate professor of linguistics at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, whose research specialty is analyzing conversations between advanced practice providers – nurse practitioners, NPs, and physician’s assistants, PAs – and patients. They also talk to Temple West and Alison Schoew, educators in the simulation and standardized patient program at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in Norfolk, who give medical students the opportunity to practice their communication and diagnostic skills through role play. (According to West, who administers the program, they’re always looking for community members to participate in the standardized patient program. To learn more and to apply,  https://www.evms.edu/community/community_training/sentara_center_for_simulation_immersive_learning_a/capabilities/standardized_patients/)

 Additionally, LanguagingHR talked to Barb Morrison, a physician’s assistant at a Sentara Health internal medicine practice, who participated in Defibaugh’s most recent research project. And Dr. LaTonya Russell, MD, a pediatrician and medical director for Sentara’s community-based clinics statewide in Virginia, talked about the importance of listening to patients’ stories.