Is the Medium the Message?

NCT03374865 | Unknown

• 1 other identifier: 2016-2822
• Study Type: observational
• Target: 50
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Digital communication media like video-interaction (cf. Skype) are increasingly being adopted in institutional environments like hospitals for physician-patient interactions. We may expect that the use of a digital medium affects these interactions in various ways and on various levels. In video-interaction, eye contact for example is impossible due to the position of the camera, which implies interactional behavior through gaze is impaired. This may influence who speaks when, if and how the participants avoid/ solve misunderstandings, etcetera. This project makes headway in our understanding of the impact of new communication media on the role of language-in-use as a rich semiotic system, specifically in institutional interaction. This type of contextualized research reveals which communicative aspects users consider important, how they manage their institutional relationship through them and how they go about solving communication problems. The project compares the interaction of physicians and patients in video-mediated consultations to their traditional, face-to-face counterparts on both the verbal and the nonverbal (gaze) level. The affordances of video-consultations with relevance to institutional goals and identities are analyzed through a comparison with the interaction in face-to-face consultations. The approach used is Conversation Analysis, which involves finding patterns on both the verbal and non-verbal level (in sequences, turn design, preference, etc.) in order to answer the question what goals and tasks the participants achieve and what dilemma's or problems they aim to solve in their talk. This study will provide insights in the limitations and advantages of both channels of communication. Best practices will be generated and outcomes of the analyses will be used to develop reco

Conditions

Video-mediated Consultation; Face to Face Consultation

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Verbal communication

  Verbal communication. The main method is multimodal conversation analysis. Conversation analysis has a long tradition of research based on the rendition of talk and interaction in terms of written transcripts of the audible cues. The video-mediated and face-to-face interactions will be compared. This means that phenomena observed in the video-mediated consultations will be compared to equivalent actions and practices in the face-to-face consultations. Relevant phenomena are likely to be the opening of the conversation (checking the technology), the design of questions (use of more lexical tokens than deixis), particular gestures, specific repair sequences due to technical trouble etc.). The analysis will be descriptive. All talk will be transcribed according to CA conventions. Software like ELAN may be used for the synchronization of multiple video data and for the annotation of (fragments of) the video data.

  10 minutes

Secondary Outcomes (1)

• Non-verbal communication

  10 minutes

Study Arms (2)

Video-mediated consultation

Consultations using Facetalk videocommunication software

Other: Facetalk

Face-to-face consultation

Traditional face-to-face consultations

Other: Face-to-face consultation

Interventions

Facetalk OTHER

Area of interest: communication during Facetalk consultations

Video-mediated consultation

Face-to-face consultation OTHER

Area of interest: communication during face-to-face consultations

Face-to-face consultation

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: all
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)
• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Discharged post-operative patients from a single tertiary medical center

You may qualify if:

• Discharged post-operative patients
• Follow up consultation for pathology results

You may not qualify if:

• \- Physical examination needed

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Radboud University Medical Center: lead

Study Sites (1)

RadboudUMC

Nijmegen, Netherlands

RECRUITING

Central Study Contacts

Martijn Stommel

CONTACT

024 361 1111; Martijn.Stommel@radboudumc.nl

Study Design

• Study Type: observational
• Observational Model: CASE CONTROL
• Time Perspective: PROSPECTIVE
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: June 15, 2017
• First Posted: December 15, 2017
• Study Start: June 1, 2017
• Primary Completion: September 1, 2018
• Study Completion: December 1, 2018
• Last Updated: December 15, 2017

Record last verified: 2017-06

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

NL (1)