Elsey et al - Towards diagnostic conversational profiles FINAL CLEAN.pdf (488.95 kB)
Towards diagnostic conversational profiles of patients presenting with dementia or functional memory disorders to memory clinics
journal contribution
posted on 2015-07-30, 14:01 authored by Christopher Elsey, Paul Drew, Danielle Jones, Daniel Blackburn, Sarah Wakefield, Kirsty Harkness, Annalena Venneri, Markus ReuberObjective: This study explores whether the profile of patients' interactional behaviour in memory clinic conversations with a doctor can contribute to the clinical differentiation between functional memory disorders (FMD) and memory problems related to neurodegenerative diseases. Methods: Conversation Analysis of video recordings of neurologists' interactions with patients attending a specialist memory clinic. "Gold standard" diagnoses were made independently of CA findings by a multi-disciplinary team based on clinical assessment, neuropsychological testing and brain imaging. Results: Two discrete conversational profiles for patients with memory complaints emerged, including (i) who attends the clinic (i.e., whether or not patients are accompanied), and (ii) patients' responses to neurologists' questions about memory problems, such as difficulties with compound questions and providing specific and elaborated examples and frequent "I don't know" responses. Conclusion: Specific communicative difficulties are characteristic of the interaction patterns of patients with a neurodegenerative pathology. Those difficulties are manifest in memory clinic interactions with neurologists, thereby helping to differentiate patients with dementia from those with FMD. Practical implications: Our findings demonstrate that conversational profiles based on patients' contributions to memory clinic encounters have diagnostic potential to assist the screening and referral process from primary care, and the diagnostic service in secondary care.
Funding
This article presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Programme [grant reference number PB-PG-0211-24079].
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Patient Education and CounselingCitation
ELSEY, C. ... et al, 2015. Towards diagnostic conversational profiles of patients presenting with dementia or functional memory disorders to memory clinics. Patient Education and Counseling, 98(9), pp.1071-77.Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2015Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Patient Education and Counseling and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2015.05.021ISSN
0738-3991eISSN
1873-5134Publisher version
Language
- en