Discussion
TCM, ’
This study examines the effect of including patients’ conventional medical history and treatment in the treatment plan and diagnosis on TCM practitioners’ clinical communicative skills. In three steps – a macro-analysis, micro-analysis and scoring on the Calgary-Cambridge Guide – the study analysed the effective communicative practices of TCM practitioners with their patients regarding the integration of their conventional medicine medical history at the stages of diagnosis and treatment planning. The study demonstrated that the incorporation of patients’ conventional medical history can lead to practitioners having a more holistic understanding of their patients’ conditions. Despite the intervention making no significant difference to the question types adopted by the practitioners during the consultations, the ratio of total number of questions asked and conversational turns of practitioners in the experimental group increased markedly from the pre-test consultations to the post-test consultations. However, the effect of the intervention declined over time. Furthermore, the practitioners in the control group mostly scored higher on the Calgary-Cambridge Guide in the post-test consultation than on the pre-test consultation, suggesting that the inclusion of patients’ conventional medical history was not the only variable influencing the nature of the consultations.As mentioned above, one finding of Slade et al. was that conventional doctors tended to ask Wh-Qs more frequently than TCM practitioners [Several limitations can be found in this study. For examples, this study is limited to Hong Kong, and TCM practitioner–patient interactions might have different patterns in other geographical regions. Only eight TCM practitioners were recruited for this study, and they were all from Hong Kong, where TCM is outside of public hospital system and thus the findings of TCM communication practice could be different from other Chinese contexts. Due to the small sample size, generalisation of the research findings should be made cautiously.