ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates Hong Kong medical students’ linguistic competence in delivering bad news to patients. Thirty final-year medical students were recruited from a medical school. Each student was given a scenario-based role-play activity to deliver a 20-min critical conversation with a standardised patient and such conversation was video-recorded. The verbal and non-verbal communication components of these students were analysed, and their use of language in developing rapport and empathy with patients in Cantonese was captured. The themes which emerged from these students’ reflections on effective clinical communication are summarised. The finding shows that these medical students did not receive much training in developing their local language in order to build interpersonal relationships with patients. Even though a Western-based communication protocol was in place to guide students to go through different stages of delivering bad news, the students struggled to identify relative local language and expression to build rapport with patients.
