Introduction

Part III focuses on communication and medical care, and approaches questions of medical communication through explorations of the intersections among meaning, culture, and power. These chapters represent emerging interest in the variety of contexts in which medical communication occurs. These settings include an emergency room, a dialysis clinic, and a mobile health clinic, as well as the “virtual” setting of a commercial website representing the interests of pharmaceutical companies. In this introduction, we describe the genesis of interpretive, cultural and critical perspectives in medical communication, and note important directions for continued research.