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Qualitative Health Research
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Communication Channels in General Internal Medicine: A Description of Baseline Patterns for Improved Interprofessional Collaboration

Lesley Gotlib Conn

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Lorelei Lingard

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Scott Reeves

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Karen-Lee Miller

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Ann Russell

The Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Merrick Zwarenstein

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

General internal medicine (GIM) is a communicatively complex specialty because of its diverse patient population and the number and diversity of health care providers working on a medicine ward. Effective interprofessional communication in such information-intensive environments is critical to achieving optimal patient care. Few empirical studies have explored the ways in which health professionals exchange patient information and the implications of their chosen communication forms. In this article, we report on an ethnographic study of health professionals' communication in two GIM wards through the lens of communication genre theory. We categorize and explore communication in GIM into two genre sets—synchronous and asynchronous—and analyze the relationship between them. Our findings reveal an essential relationship between synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication that has implications for the effectiveness of interprofessional collaboration in this and similar health care settings, and is intended to inform efforts to overcome existing interprofessional communication barriers.

Key Words: communication • ethnography • health care • teamwork

This version was published on July 1, 2009

Qualitative Health Research, Vol. 19, No. 7, 943-953 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1049732309338282
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