Facework and uncertain reasoning in health communication

Patient Educ Couns. 2011 Nov;85(2):169-72. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2010.09.005. Epub 2010 Oct 2.

Abstract

Objectives: Health care professionals often need to convey good and bad prospects to patients, and these news can be qualified by various uncertainty terms. Based on a sociolinguistic analysis of the way these uncertainty terms are used, we predicted that they would be interpreted differently by patients as a function of whether they qualified good news or bad news.

Method: Two studies investigating causal inferences were conducted among a sample of French university students (Study 1, N=50), and among a sample of Italian pregnant women (Study 2, N=532).

Results: Participants felt greater confidence in the conclusions they derived when the news were bad, as compared to the conclusions they derived when the news were good.

Conclusion: The findings have implications for health care professionals who communicate good and bad prospects to patients, and who need to qualify the certainty of these prospects.

Practice implications: Professionals should be aware that when the news are bad, any hedging term such as "possible" can be misunderstood as an attempt to sugar-coat the pill, and that this misinterpretation can lead patient to inferences that are not shared by the professional.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Analysis of Variance
  • Communication*
  • Female
  • France
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Pregnancy
  • Professional-Patient Relations*
  • Students
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Truth Disclosure*
  • Uncertainty