Abstract
This article reports a study of simulated interactions between emergency medical teams, as they are used in education for specialist trainee doctors. We focus on a key area of communicative competence that trainees are assessed on: the performance of leadership skills. Using videos of simulated trauma cases recorded within a training department of a large teaching hospital in the UK, we analyse how trainee doctors delegate tasks to their teams, matching up their linguistic performance, in particular their use of requests, to how they are assessed in the simulation overall. This allows us to establish the types of linguistic leadership performance that are evaluated positively in this setting and therefore are attributed to success. Through fine-grained, qualitative analysis, we examine the interrelationship between ‘efficiency’, evidenced by the subsequent successful completion of an action by the team, and the use of indirect and mitigated requests, finding that a high number of indirect forms are successfully used to make requests of others in this time-pressured setting. We discuss the theoretical implications of our observations, revisiting claims about linguistic behaviour in urgent contexts, and also consider the practical implications of the study, including professional practice and training.
Highlights
This article reports on a detailed analysis of simulated interactions between teams of health professionals working in emergency medicine
A pragmatic analysis of the performance and the uptake ofdirect and mitigated requests in ad hoc settings we argue, is novel and has much to offer with regards to testing some of the theoretical claims put forward both in the pragmatics and in the healthcare communication literature
Emergency medical training constitutes a fruitful site for analysing the linguistic performance of leadership in high-pressure environments, providing a useful context for studying how the delegation of tasks contributes to the joint attainment of timesensitive goals
Summary
This article reports on a detailed analysis of simulated interactions between teams of health professionals working in emergency medicine. The analysis addresses the relative success of these strategies (a) in achieving joint actions within the team (evidenced endogenously in interaction through the completion of tasks) and (b) with respect to their evaluation by an observing medical practitioner and healthcare staff involved in the simulation (evidenced exogenously, through assessment information and feedback) This enables empirical-linguistic testing of the framework itself and the interactional effectiveness of the types of requesting strategies used in a setting where communicative ‘clarity’ is important to getting tasks achieved. Our conclusions highlight the insights these findings offer for linguistic theories of and assumptions about (im)politeness and (in)directness, assumptions about how efficiency and clarity are communicatively achieved in urgent, timepressured contexts as exemplified by emergency medicine These findings have some implications for professional practice and training in clinical settings, in terms of the discursive performance of leadership (Fairhurst, 2007) in medical teams
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
