1: Introduction

The popular way of learning clinical communication in doctor-patient consultations is through experiential learning using simulated patients (SPs) to simulate clinical consultations. Students rely on the reflective accounts (also known as feedback) of their interaction with SPs from colleagues, tutors and themselves. Such reflective accounts require meta-analytical skills to unpack the complexity of human communication. However, neither the students nor the teachers are trained with those skills. Feedback giving varies from person to person depending on their different professional, academic and personal backgrounds.  Unpacking the complexity of clinical communication and articulating what counts as good practice still remain challenging tasks (van den Eertwegh et al., 2013, Wouda and van de Wiel, 2013).

This e-learning will provide trainers and students with a cognitive analytical tool that they can use to achieve a better understanding of the interaction that underpins all communication. The analytical tool draws on well-established analytical methods that sociolinguists use in their studies of the human interactions that constitute various social events, including doctor-patient encounters. 

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