Communication in Telehealth: A State-of-the-Art Literature Review of Conversation-Analytic Research.

We provide a state-of-the-art review of research on conversation analysis and telehealth. We conducted a systematic review of the literature, focusing on studies that investigate how technology is procedurally consequential for the interaction. We discerned three key topics: the interactional organization, the therapeutic relationship, and the clinical activities of the encounter. The literature on telehealth is highly heterogeneous, with significant differences between text-based care (e.g., via chat or e-mail) and audio(visual) care (e.g., via telephone or video). We discuss the extent to which remote care can be regarded as a demarcated field for study or whether the medium is merely part of the "context," particularly when investigating hybrid and polymedia forms of care involving multiple technological media.

Clinical context and communication in shared decision-making about major surgery: Findings from a qualitative study with colorectal, orthopaedic and cardiac patients.

Increasing numbers of older people undergo major surgery in the United Kingdom (UK), with many at high risk of complications due to age, co-morbidities or frailty. This article reports on a study of such patients and their clinicians engaged in shared decision-making. Shared decision-making is a collaborative approach that seeks to value and centre patients' preferences, potentially addressing asymmetries of knowledge and power between clinicians and patients by countering medical authority with greater patient empowerment. We studied shared decision-making practices in the context of major surgery by recruiting 16 patients contemplating either colorectal, cardiac or joint replacement surgery in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Over 18 months 2019-2020, we observed and video-recorded decision-making consultations, studied the organisational and clinical context for consultations, and interviewed patients and clinicians about their experiences of making decisions. Linguistic ethnography, the study of communication and interaction in context, guided us to analyse the interplay between interactions (during consultations between clinicians, patients and family members) and clinical and organisational features of the contexts for those interactions. We found that the framing of consultations as being about life-saving or life-enhancing procedures was important in producing three different genres of consultations focused variously on: resolving problems, deliberation of options and evaluation of benefits of surgery. We conclude that medical authority persists, but can be used to create more deliberative opportunities for decision-making through amending the context for consultations in addition to adopting appropriate communication practices during surgical consultations.

Video analysis of communication by physiotherapists and patients in video consultations: a qualitative study using conversation analysis.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the challenges of doing physical examinations and exercises by video, and the communication strategies used by physiotherapists and patients to overcome them. DESIGN: A qualitative study of talk and social actions, examining the verbal and non-verbal communication practices used by patients and physiotherapists. Video consultations between physiotherapists and patients were video recorded using MS Teams, transcribed and analysed in detail using Conversation Analysis. SETTING: Video consultations were recorded in three specialist settings (long-term pain, orthopaedics, and neuromuscular rehabilitation) across two NHS hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: 15 adult patients (10 female, 5 male; aged 20-77) with a scheduled video consultation. RESULTS: Examinations and exercises retain-->were successfully accomplished in all 15 consultations. Two key challenges were identified for physiotherapists and patients when doing video assessments: (1) managing safety and clinical risk, and (2) making exercises and movements visible. Challenges were addressed by through communication practices that were patient-centred and tailored to the video context (e.g., explaining how to frame the body to the camera or adjust the camera to make the body visible). CONCLUSIONS: Video is being used by physiotherapists to consult with their patients. This can work well, but tailored communication strategies are critical to help participants overcome the challenges of remote physical examinations and exercises. CONTRIBUTION OF THE PAPER: This paper is a first to use video-based analysis to determine the challenges of video consulting for doing remote assessments and exercises in physiotherapy settings. It demonstrates how patients and physiotherapists use communication strategies to raise concerns around safety and visibility and how they overcome these concerns.

Using Linguistic Ethnography to Study Video Consultations: A Call to Action and Future Research Agenda.

Video consultations are a rapidly growing service model, particularly in secondary care. Studies, mainly using trials and post-hoc surveys, have routinely documented that they can be a safe and effective means to deliver care at a distance. While video offers new opportunities to provide health services, it also constrains how patients and clinicians can interact, raising questions about feasibility, quality, and safety-questions that cannot be adequately addressed with prevailing methods and approaches. To support successful and appropriate implementation, use and spread of video consultations, we need to investigate how video changes the interaction. In this article, we use two worked examples to demonstrate how Linguistic Ethnography, a methodological approach combining ethnographic with linguistic analysis, enables a detailed understanding of how communication in video consultations works, providing an evidence base to support patients and clinicians with using this service model.

Whose turn is it anyway? Latency and the organization of turn-taking in video-mediated interaction.

Latency in video-mediated interaction can frustrate smooth turn-taking: it may cause participants to perceive silence at points where talk should occur, it may cause them to talk in overlap, and it impedes their ability to return to one-speaker-at-a-time. Whilst potentially frustrating for participants, this makes video-mediated interaction a perspicuous setting for the study of social interaction: it is an environment that nurtures the occurrence of turn-taking problems. For this paper, we conducted secondary analysis of 25 video consultations recorded for heart failure, (antenatal) diabetes, and cancer services in the UK. By comparing video recordings of the patient's and clinician's side of the call, we provide a detailed analysis of how latency interferes with the turn-taking system, how participants understand problems, and how they address them. We conclude that in our data latency unnoticed until it becomes problematic: participants act as if they share the same reality.

Multidisciplinary meetings at the emergency department: A conversation-analytic study of decision-making.

Multidisciplinary meetings (MDMs) have become an established part of many medical disciplines. Much research has been done to investigate the conditions under which they work best. This research, however, has been mostly retrospective and has had little consideration for the actual workings of MDMs. The aim of this study was to determine how Multidisciplinary Teams (MDTs) come to a shared decision and thus how they organize MDMs moment by moment. For this purpose we recorded twenty MDMs at the Department of Emergency Medicine (ED) of the Radboud University Medical Center in The Netherlands between November 2017 and June 2018. These meetings, contrary to those discussed in the literature, were scheduled ad-hoc as patients were seen at the ED and were conducted by small MDTs of between three and six participants, always involving a surgeon, a geriatrician, and an emergency physician. Using Conversation Analysis we found that despite the ad hoc nature of these meetings, teams collaboratively developed a structure that was grounded in everyday medical practice and reached a decision in on average slightly over 10 min. First they do a case presentation in which they share the patient's medical history and results of the physical examination and any medical tests. They subsequently agree on a differential diagnosis, and then develop a work plan. Finally, the decision is often formulated to invite confirmation and make it an interactionally shared decision. The benefit of having an MDM was evidenced by discussion of patients' frailty in particular: it was sometimes omitted during the case presentation, but then consistently requested by the geriatrician. And as we show, it was occasionally invoked as a definitive argument for deciding between surgical or conservative treatment. Our analysis suggests that MDMs can have added value in other disciplines where it is feasible to schedule meetings ad hoc.

Technology-Enhanced Consultations in Diabetes, Cancer, and Heart Failure: Protocol for the Qualitative Analysis of Remote Consultations (QuARC) Project.

BACKGROUND: Remote videoconsulting is promoted by policy makers as a way of delivering health care efficiently to an aging population with rising rates of chronic illness. As a radically new service model, it brings operational and interactional challenges in using digital technologies. In-depth research on this dynamic is needed before remote consultations are introduced more widely. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study will be to identify and analyze the communication strategies through which remote consultations are accomplished and to guide patients and clinicians to improve the communicative quality of remote consultations. METHODS: In previous research, we collected and analyzed two separate datasets of remote consultations in a National Institute for Health Research-funded study of clinics in East London using Skype and a Wellcome Trust-funded study of specialist community heart failure teams in Oxford using Skype or FaceTime. The Qualitative Analysis of Remote Consultations (QuARC) study will combine datasets and undertake detailed interactional microanalysis of up to 40 remote consultations undertaken by senior and junior doctors and nurse specialists, including consultations with adults with diabetes, women who have diabetes during pregnancy, people consulting for postoperative cancer surgery and community-based patients having routine heart failure reviews along with up to 25 comparable face-to-face consultations. Drawing on established techniques (eg, conversation analysis), analysis will examine the contextual features in remote consultations (eg, restricted visual field) combined with close analysis of different modes of communication (eg, speech, gesture, and gaze). RESULTS: Our findings will address the current gap in knowledge about how technology shapes the fine detail of communication in remote consultations. Alongside academic outputs, findings will inform the coproduction of information and guidance about communication strategies to support successful remote consultations. CONCLUSIONS: Identifying the communication strategies through which remote consultations are accomplished and producing guidance for patients and clinicians about how to use this kind of technology successfully in consultations is an important and timely goal because roll out of remote consultations is planned across the National Health Service. REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER: RR1-10.2196/10913.