Searching for the Patient's Presence in Medical Case Reports

The book addresses the issue of the patient’s presence in specialist medical publications in the context of a patient-centered approach to medical practice. The author combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to analyze the discourse about the patient in one of the oldest medical genres, case reports. She traces textual references to patients throughout the reports to show that their nature and frequency depend both on the structure of the genre and the context of the production of these texts. The author touches upon the topical issue that although specialist communication may seem to exclude patients, it does not mean it does not concern them. Indeed, they are written about and it appears critical how this is done.

Magdalena Zabielska works at the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in Poland. Her main research interests lie in the fields of health communication and written medical discourse. She has published a number of papers devoted to the discourse of case reports found in specialist medical journals.