Health-Related Organizational Communication: A General Platform for Interdisciplinary Research

This article explores how research at the intersection of health and organizational communication offers theoretical and practical value for researchers and practitioners across a variety of disciplines and occupations. Because communication practices influence a number of important health–organizational issues (e.g., professional identity, provider–patient interaction, worker safety), this study is of interest to a variety of stakeholders. Interested parties include health care organizations, patients, health care professionals, third-party payers, policy makers, employees, labor unions, employers, and researchers. Scholarship at the intersection of health and organizational communication is neither organizational communication per se nor health communication per se. It is, instead, scholarship situated between two established traditions, with each strand informing an overarching interest in what I refer to as health-related organizational communication. I suggest three areas of research in which health-related organizational communication can address issues important to communication researchers and other stakeholders. The first addresses problems of communication and professional identity, which are magnified within health care organizations due to professional status, norms, roles, and the particular socialization of

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