Role Differences in Healthcare: Overcoming Borders through Semiotic Skin is the Basis for Communication

Abstract

Role differences in healthcare systems are the very foundation of communication in this specific field of environment. It has to be understood as a collective corporation between collective individuals and thus connect through intertwined border zones. These border zones between collective communicators holds the notions of individuality, which is represented in the ability to decipher and negotiate the multiple layers in the communicative border zone. These processes in border zones of persons - in relation with others - are dealt with by the Semiotic Skin Theory. In addition, the biological skin is central for human lives and the Semiotic Skin is conceptualized as a socio-somatic-semiotic, layered and dynamic membrane that operates as a semi-permeable, communicative boundary. A constant interpretation between a self-reflecting system and an unending spiral of semiosis is the emergent of the semiotic skin. It creates a semi-permeable barrier that holds the very notions of the multi-layered skin-on-the-skin that is reflected in an embodied communication between humans and environment. In this theoretical understanding of an embodied aspect of not only meaning-making but also the regulative aspect of embodied interaction with others, the very idea of borders of individuality becomes the notion of interpretation. Any communication in a medical setting involves actions on the border of mutual understanding - e.g. communication between a pediatrician and a child. The concepts of a collective patient and a collective doctor are introduced as to understand the aspects of the multiple dynamics of the semiotic skin as the holder of an individual's personal ideas/interpretations in the interaction with one other person, holding multiple aspects from others as well. Examples of the interaction between patients and the healthcare system in Denmark illustrate how a new theoretical and practical performance of mastering the communicative partnership in the cross field between the healthcare system and psychology is born.