Interactive Case Studies in Health Communication

"Real-life" case studies provide your students with a unique learning opportunity!

Interactive Case Studies in Health Communication allows students and faculty to explore real-life health communication behaviors through role-playing, interactive exercises, and examples that have been adapted from actual healthcare situations. The interactive format asks readers to assess the health communication and information exchange that occurs in the initial scenario of each chapter, then to answer questions about their observations and assessments. The student then has the opportunity to rewrite the scenario in order to enhance the interpersonal communication, relationship-building, and decision-making between the participants. An alternate scenario is also presented to provide readers with an example to compare to their rewrite.

Interactive Case Studies in Health Communication covers a wide variety of health communication topics including nonverbal communication, family communication, telephone conversations, managed care, emotional issues, hostile patient or family members, the media’s impact on provider-patient communication, intercultural communication and end-of-life conversations. This book also highlights the importance of interpersonal communication and relationship-building for information sharing and collaborative decision-making.

The purpose of this text is to inform and enhance classroom discussions of health communication by providing real-life examples of various communication behaviors including:

• Provider-provider
• Provider-patient
• Patient-family
• Provider-3rd party
• Patient-3rd party
• Media-provider
• Media-patient/consumer

Each chapter includes role play scenarios, discussion questions and interactive activities, and key points!

Table of Contents

Preface  
  Dedication  
  Using This Text  
Section  1  Provider Communication
  Chapter  1  Learning to Talk Like a Health Care Provider
  Chapter  2  See One, Do One, Teach One
  Chapter  3  The Biomedical Model
  Chapter  4  The Biopsychosocial Model
  Chapter  5  Autonomy is a Myth
  Chapter  6  Bad News
  Chapter  7  Closings
  Chapter  8  Follow-Up
  Chapter  9  I’ve Got the License, so We’re Doing it My Way 
Section  2  Patient Communication
  Chapter  10  What’s Wrong with Me?
  Chapter  11  I Understand
  Chapter  12  It’s Been 2 Hours
  Chapter  13  Why Do I Have to Wait for an MRI?
  Chapter  14  I’m Feeling Better, But…
  Chapter  15  We Don’t Know What to Do
  Chapter  16  I Hurt My Back
Section  3  The Media and Health Communication
  Chapter  17  Erectile Dysfunction
  Chapter  18  I’ve Got a Defibrillator
  Chapter  19  I Saw this Ad on Television
  Chapter  20  Education or Promotion?
  Chapter  21  How About Cereal for My Cholesterol?
  Chapter  22  Are Vaccines Safe?
Section  4  Role of Third Parties in Health Communication
  Chapter  23  How Safe are Generics
  Chapter  24  I Can’t Work
  Chapter  25  You’ll Feel Better Recovering At Home
  Chapter  26  I Only Have 9 Minutes or So
  Chapter  27  Why Don’t You Tell Me About It?
Section  5  Culture and Health Communication
  Chapter  28  We Just Need to Get Through the Chemo
  Chapter  29  No Hablo Espanol
  Chapter  30  HIPAA
  Chapter  31  When Can My Employee Return to Work?
  Chapter  32  Please Take Off Your Clothes and Put On This Gown
  Chapter  33  Don’t Tell My Wife She’s Dying

About the Author(s)

Michael P. Pagano, PA-C, PhD - Department of Communication, Fairfield University

The author is a practicing PA with nearly 3 decades of experience and expertise.  He was at one time a Professor and Chair of a PA program in Chicago.  He currently works in a Level II Trauma Center/Emergency Department and in an Occupational Health Services Department of a suburban hospital.  Over the years, he has worked in numerous medical areas, including surgery, family practice, emergency departments, corporate health, women’s health/family planning and occupational medicine.  He intends to use his experience and education to assure that the case studies are accurate representations of communication behaviors and provide a wide array of settings and situations for professors and readers to explore, assess and critique.  The author also has his PhD in Communication and will use his health communication background to help illustrate the shortcomings of some of the examples and emphasize interactive ways to help aid assimilation, critical thinking and analyses.  Over the years, he has written numerous journal articles, published several textbooks and presented at a host of different conferences.