Use of other-repetitions/reformulations as feedback by foreign and Swedish physicians in medical consultations

In medical consultation, understanding between physician and patient is essential for the quality of the care. Confidence in understanding is especially important in intercultural medical consultations as language problems and cultural differences may cause problems in interactions. This study presents an analysis and comparison of how foreign and Swedish physicians use repetitions and reformulations of their patients’ utterances in order to indicate and check understanding. The analysis is based on 63 recordings of medical consultations (34 foreign physician-Swedish patient and 29 Swedish physician-Swedish patient consultations). Activity-based communication analysis is used to analyze the material. The results show that the foreign physicians tend to repeat and to reformulate (parts of) their patients' utterances more often than the Swedish ones. Some of the reasons are uncertainty concerning understanding, language factor and consequent increased need to check and “record” information provided by interlocutor compared to native speakers. The fact that those foreign physicians who spent the least time in Sweden produce more repetitions and reformulations may confirm the influence of language acquisition. Furthermore, the native languages of foreign physicians might also have an impact on the frequency of use of this communicative strategy.