Rhetoric of Health Care Communication

The concept of usability is often connected to the setting – or context – in which individuals perform an activity. International settings complicate such relationships by introducing new variables that affect usability in different locations. In international health and medical communication, this situation can create problems that affect the health and wellness of patients in other nations and cultures. International patient experience design (I-PXD) presents a heuristic for addressing this situation. I-PXD helps individuals identify variables affecting usability in different international contexts. Persons working in health and medical communication can use this I-PXD heuristic to address usability expectations in various international contexts.

ABSTRACT This paper critically appraises the rhetoric of marketing management texts. Its interpretive frame is informed respectively by critical management and discourse analytic theoretical traditions. Its main data set is drawn from popular
textbooks written for taught university courses but it also draws attention to similar rhetorical strategies in leading academic marketing journals. In addition, parallels are drawn with other popular management and consulting fields. In this way the paper
attempts to mark out an initial topology of the ideological influence that is enabled and mobilized by marketing's rhetorical strategies. Marketing rhetoric often escapes critical attention precisely because it is platitudinous. Marketing management axioms have become slogans and the slogans have become cliches regularly employed in organizational, educational and political settings. But the prevalence of platitudinous rhetoric in management consulting schemes does not necessarily hinder their popularity or inhibit the deployment of their rhetorical/ideological strategies in other settings. Popular marketing management rhetoric is a special case because it positions itself not only as a prescriptive management-consulting framework but also as a legitimate academic fleld. It is in the latter guise that the success of managerial marketing's rhetorical/ideological strategies has proved most striking.

This book guides healthcare professionals, hospital administrators, and medical interpreters in the United States (and internationally) in ways to better communicate with Deaf and Hard of Hearing (D/HH) patients and sign language interpreters in healthcare settings. It also provides an overview of the healthcare communication issues with healthcare professionals and D/HH patients, and the advantages and disadvantages of using in-person interpreters vs. video remote interpreting (VRI). Due to technology development, hospital administrators have popularized the use of VRI and reduced the number of in-person interpreting services, which have negatively affected the quality of medical interpreting services and patient-provider communication. The COVID-19 pandemic also has accelerated the move toward more VRI, particularly in the US.

The book addresses an understudied aspect of access and is written by an international deaf researcher from Japan who uses American Sign Language (ASL) and English as non-native languages. In order to identify appropriate interpreting services for specific treatments, the author focuses on healthcare professionals' and D/HH patients' interpreting preferences for critical and non-critical care in the US, and offers a new theoretical framework, an Ecology of Health Communication, to contextualize and analyze these preferences. The ecological matrix and its five analytical dimensions (i.e., physical-material, psychological, social, spatial, and temporal) allow readers to understand how these dimensions influence healthcare professionals' and D/HH patients' interpreting preferences as well as the treatment outcomes. This book concludes by prioritizing the use of an appropriate interpreter for specific treatments and allocating funds for in-person interpreters for critical care treatments.

Deaf Rhetoric: An Ecology of Health Communication is primarily designed for healthcare professional students and professionals, hospital administrators, medical interpreters, VRI companies, and healthcare researchers. Scholars interested in the communication preferences of healthcare professionals and deaf people also will find this text useful. The book counters some of the power differences between healthcare providers and those who use medical services, and subtly reminds others that deaf people are not solely the receivers of medical care but actually are full people. The field of health care is growing and medical schools are increasingly called on to address cultural competencies; this resource provides a needed intervention.

As recent media coverage of Ebola has demonstrated, there is a growing need to communicate health and medical information effectively on a global scale.  Doing so requires creating visuals that effectively convey health and medical information to diverse audiences (e.g., healthcare providers and patients) in different cultures. This entry discusses how prototype theory can help communication designers address cultural expectations associated with visual design in health and medical contexts. The over‐arching idea is to apply prototype theory to certain design areas associated with care giving. By doing so, communication designers can better contextualize visual information to meet the expectations of individuals from other cultures.