Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that doctors’ expressions of empathy are fundamental to a successful medical consultation. While extensive work has been done on empathic communication in face-to-face medical encounters, few studies explored expressions of empathy in online medical consultations. Such research is particularly scarce in Chinese contexts, even though China has recently seen substantial growth in e-healthcare activities. To gain a better understanding of clinical empathic communication in online environment, this study, using discourse-analytic tools, explores the pragmatic functions of doctors’ empathic responses in text-based online medical consultations in China. The study finds that most empathic responses by doctors can be said to perform the function of facilitating the institutional task of problem-solving, and a few serve the function of self-promotion that is likely to be triggered by the e-commerce model for online medical services.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 816-825 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Health Communication |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Early online date | 10 Jan 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Jun 2021 |
Scopus Subject Areas
- Health(social science)
- Communication