'Geraniums (red) and Delphiniums (blue)': Trauma, Ethics, and Medical Communications

Abstract

More official complaints about medical treatment in the UK relate to poor communications than to wrong diagnoses. This article, in considering the importance of communications training for clinicians, is structured into three sections. From use of a story that introduces the idea of miscommunication and trauma in the first section, the article moves, in the second, to a theorisation of trauma as a concept, addressing issues of intersubjectivity, the relationship between embodied and psychological being, and ethics. From this, the third section engages directly with medical communications training, exemplifying a particular literary-studies approach to matters of communication.