Vol. 16, Issue 1, Jul-Dec 2023

Page: 71-82

Hospital Discourse: Assessing Language Impact on Patients During Patient-Receptionist Encounter

Dr. Tameh Kilian Gifui

Received Date: 2025-08-15

Accepted Date: 2025-09-18

Published Date: 2025-09-29

Communication between its employees and staff is central to every established medical facility, whether it is the administration or those directly involved in patient care. Physicians must be experts in the field of verbal and written communication if they are to safely and effectively care for their patients. This work looks mainly at how communication between healthcare receptionists and patients can impact the latter. Miscommunications in a healthcare facility can lead to erroneous diagnoses, detrimental surgical errors, and many other anomalies. The conviction in this research is that, by examining the impact on patients of communication with health personnel, some insights might be revealed as to why complaints persist despite improvements in the health care facilities. The main objective of this work is to assess the impact of communication between hospital receptions and patients in two well-selected hospitals in Yaounde, Cameroon. The method used to collect the data for this work is a questionnaire. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is the theoretical frame, drawing primarily from Teun van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Approach. Medical discourse plays a role in cultural production and reproduction, and effective intervention in those practices requires insightful assessment of communicative practices in a sociocultural context. Based on the analysis of the corpus under study, we realised or noticed that the manner or ways in which hospital receptionists use language is inappropriate, as seen from the discursive and linguistic strategies emanating from the data. These findings led us to conclude that the language used during receptionists-patients interaction in hospitals is the cause of the persistent complaints. By prioritising clear, jargon-free, and empathetic communication, we can empower patients to take an active role in their healthcare.

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