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. 2023 Jan 20;20(3):1915.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20031915.

How Do Team-Level and Individual-Level Linguistic Styles Affect Patients' Emotional Well-Being-Evidence from Online Doctor Teams

Xuan Liu  1 , Shuqing Zhou  1 , Xiaotong Chi  1
Affiliations

How Do Team-Level and Individual-Level Linguistic Styles Affect Patients' Emotional Well-Being-Evidence from Online Doctor Teams

Xuan Liu et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: In the post-epidemic era, online medical care is developing rapidly, and online doctor teams are attracting attention as a high-quality online medical service model that can provide more social support for patients.

Methods: Using online doctor teams on the Haodf.com platform as the research subject, this study investigates the key factors in the process of doctor-patient communication, which affects patients' emotional well-being. We also explore the different roles played by doctors as leaders and non-leaders in doctor-patient communication. From the perspective of language style, we select representative factors in the process of doctor-patient communication, namely the richness of health vocabulary, the expression of emotions, and the use of health-related terms (including perceptual words and biological words). We extract both team-level and individual-level linguistic communication styles through textual and sentiment analysis methods and empirically analyze their effects on patients' emotional well-being using multiple linear regression models.

Results: The results show that the expression of positive emotions by the team and attention to patients' perceptions and biological conditions benefit patients' emotional well-being. Leaders should focus on the emotional expression, whereas non-leaders should focus on the use of perceptual and biological words.

Conclusions: This study expands the application of linguistic styles in the medical field and provides a practical basis for improving patients' emotional well-being.

Keywords: linguistic style; online doctor teams; patients’ emotional well-being; text mining.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Research model on the influence mechanism of patients’ emotional well-being in online doctor teams.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Homepage of online doctor team.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Doctor–patient communication page with patients (incomplete screenshot).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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