INVESTIGATION OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC INDICATORS OF DOCTORS’ PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION UNDER WAR CONDITIONS IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate the psycholinguistic features of future doctors’ communication competence under war conditions in Ukraine. The study used the bibliosemantic method as well as the methods of system analysis, comparison, and generalisation. Empirical methods included direct observation of the language used by doctors and patients and the typology of empirical data based on socio-demographic factors. A total of 286 “doctor-patient” dialogues were collected. Subsequent to obtaining informed consent from the study participants, audio and video recordings were made in compliance with ethical, bioethical, and legal standards. The initial typology of dialogues, their lexical-semantic analysis, and the identification of typical positive and negative communicative strategies were carried out. A content analysis of 48 dialogues was conducted using the specialised computer programme “Textanz” for two distinct samples: “Doctors” and “Patients”. The analysis of “doctor-patient” dialogues provided psycholinguistic markers that allowed for the identification and description of typical physiological, mental, social, and spiritual states of individuals seeking medical assistance during martial law. It is also worth paying attention to those lexemes that are found either only among doctors or, on the contrary, only among patients in various contexts. This fact is a characteristic from the point of view of psycholinguistics. In particular, it is necessary to mention the differences in the semantic content of the “Physiological and mental processes, states, qualities” category. For example, there are such lexemes as “thoughts”, “attention”, “memory”, “wisdom” only in the sample of doctors. This fact indicates the efforts of specialists to transfer communication with the patient to rationalistic notions, to appeal to the intellectual abilities of the recipients, to stimulate their reflection on their own conditions. Instead, the concepts of “irritability” and “panic” are found only in a sample of patients. This testifies to their efforts to convey the negative psycho-emotional states caused, in particular, by the conditions of military operations. The doctors, however, avoid such words in order not to retraumatize their patients.