Look Who’s Talking: Teaching and Learning Using the Genre of Medical Case Presentations

Authors

Marlee M. Spafford, University of Waterloo
Catherine F. Schryer, University of Waterloo
Marcellina Mian, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON
Lorelei Lingard, University of Toronto

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-2006

Journal

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Volume

20

Issue

2

First Page

121

Last Page

158

URL with Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1050651905284396

Abstract

In a pediatric teaching hospital, the authors examined 16 novice medical case presentations that were classified as instances of a hybrid apprenticeship genre. In contrast to strict school and workplace genres, an apprenticeship genre results from the sometimes competing activity systems of student education and patient care. The authors examined these novice case presentations for the amount and patterns of time devoted to student learning and expert teaching, the difficulties created for participants, the sometimes misunderstood implicit messages delivered by experts, and the opportunities to address educational objectives. This study offers professional communication researchers a model that combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies to assess the effects of competing activity systems in the development of communication expertise.

Notes

Dr. Lorelei Lingard is currently a faculty member at The University of Western Ontario.