Language and connectedness in the medical and psychiatric interview

ObjectiveTo present and develop “connectedness” as a linguistically based concept for research and teaching of the medical and psychiatric interview; and to illustrate how this concept may be operationalized for systematic study and use.MethodsWe describe the concept and its theoretical background, illustrate it with examples, and describe a basic rating scale for connectedness that can be used for research and teaching purposes.ResultsConnectedness is grounded in established concepts from the linguistic field of discourse analysis and is applicable to the study and teaching of medical and psychiatric interviews.ConclusionsConnectedness is worthy of further study to enhance our understanding and our teaching of the interview.Practice implicationsConnectedness is a concept directly applicable to teaching and practice.