Communication in Primary Healthcare: A State-of-the-Art Literature Review of Conversation-Analytic Research

ABSTRACT

We report the first state-of-the-art review of conversation-analytic (CA) research on communication in primary healthcare. We conducted a systematic search across multiple bibliographic databases and specialist sources and employed backward and forward citation tracking. We included 177 empirical studies spanning four decades of research and 16 different countries/health systems, with data in 17 languages. The majority of studies originated in United States and United Kingdom and focused on medical visits between physicians and adult patients. We generated three broad research themes in order to synthesize the study findings: managing agendas, managing participation, and managing authority. We characterize the state-of-the-art for each theme, illustrating the progression of the work and making comparisons across different languages and health systems, where possible. We consider practical applications of the findings, reflect on the state of current knowledge, and suggest some directions for future research. Data reported are in multiple languages.

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge Nia Roberts, Information Specialist at the University of Oxford who assisted with the development of our search strategy. We also thank Ruth Parry, Anna Lindström and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2024.2305038.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ See https://emcawiki.net/EMCA_bibliography_database.

² See Ouzzani et al. (2016).

³ See https://projects.tuni.fi/touch/.

Additional information

Funding

Rebecca Barnes is funded by a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Advanced Fellowship. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, NHS or the UK Department of Health and Social [NIHR302557].