Background: Psychiatrists prescribe the psychotropic medication that is used to manage behaviors of concern (BOC) in people with intellectual disability (ID) (i.e., chemical restraint), and their attitudes and perceptions towards this treatment are important topics for study. Methods: 133 Queensland psychiatrists and psychiatry trainees completed…

Purpose: This study examined 46 articles in total, which yielded 5 recurring themes: perceived discrimination, language barriers, socioeconomic barriers, cultural barriers and educational/knowledge barriers. The two most dominant themes found were the inability to speak the country's primary language and belonging to a culture with different…

Knowledge about the quality of care delivered to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in relation to that recommended by clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) is limited. ASD care quality indicators were developed from CPGs and validated by experts, then used to assess the quality of care delivered by general practitioners (GPs) and…

Diglossia is a language situation that does not always take place between two dialects of the same language; speaking two different languages in two different encounters is also considered diglossia. This study examines the use of language among Arabic-speaking Australians in Sydney. After analyzing ten authentic doctor-patient examination…

While 'public health medicine' is a specialised field, most medical practitioners practice 'public health' to some extent, e.g., undertaking preventative screening tests or advising individuals about lifestyle interventions. While requirements to demonstrate capability in public health are common to medical education around the world, medical…

In many Western countries such as Australia, international medical graduates (IMGs) play a crucial role in meeting health workforce needs. For doctors for whom English is an additional language and who have received their medical education in non-Western settings, a challenge is the patient-centred approach to communication, which is well…

Research ethics guidelines grew out of several infamous episodes where research subjects were exploited. There is significant international synchronization of guidelines. However, indigenous groups in New Zealand, Canada and Australia have criticized these guidelines as being inadequate for research involving indigenous people and have developed…

Background: Older adults experience a high rate of falls when they transition to community-living following discharge from hospital. Objectives: To describe the proportion of older adults who could recall having discussed falls and falls prevention strategies with a health professional within 6 months following discharge from hospital. To describe…

Criticism of specific-purpose language (LSP) tests is often directed at their limited ability to represent fully the demands of the target language use situation. Such criticisms extend to the criteria used to assess test performance, which may fail to capture what matters to participants in the domain of interest. This paper reports on the…

The aim of this paper is to investigate from a discourse analytic perspective task authenticity in the speaking component of the Occupational English Test (OET), an English language screening test for clinicians designed to reflect the language demands of health professional-patient communication. The study compares the OET speaking sub-test…

Objectives: This study examined the knowledge, attitudes and practices of clinicians in promoting physical activity to prostate cancer survivors. Design: A purposeful sample was used and cross-sectional data were collected using an anonymous, self-reported online questionnaire or an identical paper-based questionnaire. Settings: Health services…

Canada, like other first-world countries, relies in large part on professional immigrants trained in other cultures and languages to complement its workforce in a wide range of professions, including medicine. International medical graduates (IMGs) who are nonnative English-speaking (NNES) and who have trained in different medical contexts are…

Language and communication skills are among the greatest challenges that non-native-English speaking international medical graduates (IMGs) face in English medical consultations. Especially when patients use unfamiliar everyday expressions or attach different meanings to medical terminology, the communicative burden on doctor-patient communication…

A grounded theory study was undertaken to understand how general practitioners (GPs) experience the death of their patients. Eleven GPs participated in semi-structured interviews. The participants explained their experience of a patient's death using the "death journey" metaphor. This journey, the Journey with the Dying, could be…

The importance of teaching communication skills in any undergraduate medical curriculum cannot be overstated. Effective doctor-patient communication is widely recognised as an essential aspect of quality patient care. A communication skills module developed for first year medical students at the University of Western Australia (UWA) is described…