Methods
TCM
As this study is based upon both the application and evaluation of communication training in promoting TCM practitioners to integrate patients’ conventional medical history in their TCM care, the methods and the data collection process comprised multiple stages: (1) development and validation of the communication training; (2) intervention; and (3) video-recorded ethnographic observation of TCM practitioner–patient interactions.In the development and validation stage, three TCM practitioners from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) formed an expert focus group to discuss and validate the analytical framework and adapt them to the Hong Kong context for content validity. Any discrepancies in the evaluative comments of the first and second experts were resolved through negotiation with the third expert. The analytical framework for analysing the communication between TCM practitioners and patients were all checked for content validity using input from the three health experts, and the subsequent calculations were based on the content validity index.After the validation, the authors recruited participants for the intervention. The participants were TCM practitioners officially registered by the Chinese Medicine Council of Hong Kong (The practitioners and their patients were randomly allocated with a 1:1 ratio to either the experimental group (i.e. the group that would receive the communication training) or the control group. After the allocation, the clinician participants were asked to complete a background survey on their background, experience, and patients’ demographics. For the experimental group, the practitioners and patients underwent a 3-h communication intervention based on the Calgary-Cambridge Guide for teaching clinical communication [To address the research questions, these activities were followed by ethnographic observations of TCM practitioner–patient consultations. After obtaining clear written consent from the practitioners and patients, research assistants audio-recorded all the medical consultations through to the discharge process and final practitioner–patient consultations. Verbal practitioner–patient interactions were collected and catalogued by the researchers. Given that there were eight practitioners (four in the control group and four in the experimental group) involved in the study, the ethnographic recordings of pre-test (before training), post-test (after training), and delayed post-test (three months after training) consultations made for a total of 24 consultations in the dataset. To assess the outcomes of the experimental and control groups, our analysis of the consultations proceeded in three main steps: macro-analysis, micro-analysis and scoring according to the Calgary-Cambridge Guide.