Patient-centred communication in Ask-the-expert healthcare websites

The study presented in this article explores to what extent and in what ways the communication between clinicians and patients on Ask-the-Expert healthcare websites is patient-centred. It further demonstrates the value of using a theory- and text-driven discourse analytical approach for the analysis of verbal communication in a (specific health) professional domain. The UK website Netdoctor is used as a case study. Thirty exchanges from this site, on the topic of depression, were analysed using a discourse-pragmatic framework, drawing on existing theories and definitions of patient-centred communication (PCC), a classification of empathic communication acts (Pounds 2011) and existing research on advice-giving in online communication. The analysis shows that, overall, experts make wide use of PCC, particularly empathic expression, in their online responses. The author concludes that there is a high potential for the expression of PCC on Ask-the-Expert health sites and that this may be more or less exploited, depending on the restrictions imposed on the contributors by the site managers and users’ expectations