Handbook of Intercultural Communication in Health Care

The Handbooks of Applied Linguistics provide a state-of-the-art description of established and emerging areas of Applied Linguistics. Each volume gives an overview of the field, explains the most important traditions and their findings, identifies the gaps in current research, and gives perspectives for future directions.

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Linguistic and cultural diversity is raising profound challenges and new opportunities for health practitioners, consumers and researchers in applied linguistics. Increasing mobility and changing demographics are adding to this complexity in all areas of health provision. The Handbook of Intercultural Communication in Health Care provides an authoritative examination of methodological and conceptual directions in the field, highlighting new domains of research that are at the forefront in exploring and addressing issues of communication raised by this complexity. These include issues of ethics, expertise and accountability; trust and risk; inequality and access; agency and self-efficacy, team collaboration; and education and training. This is the first book to establish a bridge between research and practice through the inclusion of complementary contributions from health practitioners. The book thus provides a unique focus on the relevance of intercultural communication research in health care, including the range of modes of involvement of participants, practitioners and researchers, and the subsequent impact of research on lives, practices, professions, organisations and policy.