THE EFFECT OF PHYSICIANS’ GENDER AND EXPERIENCE ON PERSIAN MEDICAL INTERACTIONS

This study focusing on physician-patient interactions aimed to find out whether physicians’ gender and experience influence Persian doctor-patient interactions. So power strategies in physician-patient interactions were extracted and categorized to explore the relationship between physicians’ gender and experience and power strategies. Fieldwork was conducted in clinics and hospitals of Rafsanjan city in Iran. One hundred physician-patient consultations were audiotaped and transcribed during 2011-2012. Woods’ (2006) view was used to examine four strategies of power and knowledge on their talk. The findings pointed out the importance of investigating discourse of medicine in order to improve medical consultations, especially physician-patient interactions. Our study confirmed some previous assertions that physician-patient interactions were asymmetrical. Physicians controlled and dominated the medical consultations by questioning, interruptions, directive statements and tag questions. The analysis of the data revealed that all power strategies were applied in Iranian physician-patient interactions. The results of Chi-Square tests indicated that there was a significant relationship between power strategies and physicians’ experience and gender. It was concluded that the female and inexperienced physicians tended to control consultations by questioning, interruption, directives and tag questions more than the male and experienced physicians.