Day: October 28, 2020

This is an assignment from a medical anthropology class. It is the second assignment in Clinical Interactions Project which is the second step of the project. In order to finish this paper, you will need to use transcriptions we wrote in step one of the project which are in the attachment named Clinical interactions transcription. Other additional materials are the available readings from the class (especially the one named Heritage 2005, this one should be very useful). The textbook is: The Paradox of Hope: Journeys Through a Clinical Borderland from Cheryl Mattingly. Please be free to use these resources.

Here are the instructions of this assignment:
Using at least two of your transcriptions, analyze a portion in which a miscommunication occurs and/or hierarchies or assumptions of the medical world are reinforced. This assignment will result in a 2-3 page paper, double spaced, with at least 1.5 pages of analysis.

Here are all the instructions of the whole clinical interactions project which may help you have further understanding:
The first half of the semester, you systematically built an understanding of the health care system as it currently is operating in the United States, by integrating a critical understanding of the readings and anthropological concepts with primary interview data  that you collected then analyzed in light of course readings, first by yourself and then with colleagues.  This series of assignments built your interview skills, analytical and writing skills, and your teamwork skills.

The second half of the semester, we are focusing on what some have called the heart of medicine:  clinical interactions.  To do this,  you will systematically build an understanding of clinical interactions by integrating a critical understanding of the readings and anthropological concepts with a different kind of primary data.

Learning Objectives:

4). Examine clinical interactions, identify and explain communicative practices that shape patient illness experience, including miscommunication

5).  Examine clinical interactions, identify and explain linguistic practices that reinforce cultural ideologies and hierarchies of medicine

6). Accurately use anthropological theories and concepts to analyze data

Skill Development:

1).  Critical thinking

2).  Ability to analyze and synthesize different kinds of scholarship (ethnographies, anthropological articles, medical journal articles and original data)

3).  Formal presentation of scholarship in two different formats

4).  Practice analyzing communicative processes

            a). Skills in transcription

            b). Skills in original data analysis

c). Skills in examining micro-level processes of clinical communications and connecting those with the macro-level processes of biomedicine

Step 1: Transcription

For the transcriptions you will work in pairs to identify and transcribe 3 video-taped clinical interactions, each worth 15 points. One of those transcriptions must be with an adult caregiver and a child, one must be with an adult, and one must be with a priority population patient (that is, a patient with characteristics associated with health inequities in the US (e.g. non-native English speakers, lower economic resources, no insurance, or perceived racial categories  of Native American, African American, or Hispanic).

Where do I find clinical interactions?  You tube or vimeo.  Within each, identify a 3-5 minute interaction that you will transcribe according to the transcription guidelines Actions  .  Note will also need to include significant non-verbal communication in the transcription.  You will turn in both transcriptions as a pair, and both transcriptions will be available for you to write your individual papers on.

Step #1: You will work with a partner to transcribe three short youtube videos of real clinical interactions.    The transcription of Clinical Interactions assignment details are here.  Those transcriptions that you do together become the raw clinical interactions data that you will individually draw upon for the rest of the project.

Step #2:  A week after you finish your transcriptions, you will submit a Mini-Analysis using a portion of two different transcripts in which either a miscommunication occurs and/or hierarchies or assumptions of the medical world are reinforced.  This is a 2-3 page, double-spaced paper, including the quoted materials from your transcriptions. 

Step #3:  Then you will start working on your final paper.  You are welcome to incorporate your mini-paper into your final paper (writing accumulates!).  Two weeks later, you will submit a draft of a full paper for peer review.

Step #4:  The week of finals, you will turn in your final paper which will be your opportunity to showcase your skills at integrating relevant course materials and concepts with evidence from your original transcription data, to build an argument analyzing how the communicative and linguistic attributes of clinical interactions are simultaneously reinforcing elements of the medical system within which the provider and patient, while impacting patient or physician life experience.