title: The communicative function of clinical narrative in radiology reporting.
abstract: Clinical narrative is often taken as a direct representation of real objects and events such as patients, diseases and treatments. We refer to this conceptualisation as the 'referential function' of clinical narrative. We introduce a complimentary perspective, taking clinical narrative as a construction relative to the situated intentions and routines of communication between author and reader. This perspective, that we call the 'communicative function', highlights the value of some underused features of clinical narrative. In this paper we bring together models of narrative structure and of communication to present a theory of the communicative function of clinical narrative. We pay particular attention to clinical narrative in radiology reporting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. rooksby@cs.man.ac.uk
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rooksby
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kay
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D006801:Humans; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D011873:Radiology Information Systems; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D006113:United Kingdom