Summary
Ged Murtagh is currently a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Communication in the Department of Surgery and Cancer. He was the Course Leader for Clinical Communication for all entrants to the MBBS programme before 2019 and Joint Domain Lead for Clinical Communication (2019- ). Previously he has held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Surrey and Leicester.
Research Interests
Ged's research is on the application of qualitative methodologies to observational, interview, audio or video data to analyse communication in health care. He has used these approaches to investigate the doctor-patient encounter and inter-professional teamwork in real clinical settings.
Ged's main interest is in doctor patient communication and the application of Conversation Analysis, a specialist technique for the analysis of audio or video data. To give an example, it is not always the case that doctors are bad at communicating with patients. In many instances being able to communicate with a patient in ways which involve the patient in treatment decisions, whilst also being sensitive to their information needs, can be a difficult thing to do well. Sometimes this is just a question of making subtle adjustments to how the doctor communicates.
For instance, doctors may ask the right question, but the timing, positioning and type of question they ask is critical in relation to the potential impact on the interaction with the patient. A series of mistimed, misplaced questions in a single consultation can have a larger negative impact on the interaction and potentially treatment decisions and ultimately health outcomes. Similar principles apply to communication among health care teams. Ged's work in concerned with how to overcome these issues through the analysis and detailed investigation of communication practices in clinical contexts.
Ged has also led on several education based projects at Imperial examining ways to improve communication skills training for medical students. research is concerned with understanding communication in healthcare contexts in ways which can help improve clinician-patient communication.
Impact and Application
In collaboration with Professor Anne Thomas and her team at Leicester, Ged was involved in the design and development of a novel consultation aid which can be used by both the patient and doctor together to facilitate information exchange within an oncology consultation. This work was funded through a grant from NIHR Research for Patient Benefit Programme.
More recently, the findings from one of Ged's PhD students (jointly supervised with Professor Alison McGregor) have been strongly endorsed by Professor Peter O Sullivan, an internationally recognised leading clinician in the field of complex pain management, within the RESTORE clinical trial.
Teaching and Innovation
Ged's teaching focus has been to ensure a comprehensive integration of clinical skills with communication skills. In the previous MBBS programme. Ged introduced several innovative changes to the teaching and assessment of clinical communication skills for medical undergraduates. These changes included a video based exam for year 1 medical students and a clinical encounter exam for year 2 students. Ged is now joint domain lead (with Dr Karen Frame) on the new MBBS programme which has provided a more ambitious context for the integration of clinical teaching with communication skills training.
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Cowell I, McGregor A, O'Sullivan P, et al., 2023, Physiotherapists' perceptions on using a multidimensional clinical reasoning form during psychologically informed training for low back pain, Musculoskeletal Science and Practice, Vol:66, ISSN:2468-7812, Pages:1-7
Soukup T, Lamb BW, Green JSA, et al., 2023, Analysis of communication styles underpinning clinical decision-making in cancer multidisciplinary team meetings, Frontiers in Psychology, Vol:14, ISSN:1664-1078, Pages:1-13
Murtagh GM, 2023, A critical look at ideas, concerns and expectations in clinical communication, Medical Education, Vol:57, ISSN:0308-0110, Pages:331-336
Cowell I, McGregor A, O'Sullivan P, et al., 2021, Physiotherapists' approaches to patients' concerns in back pain consultations following a psychologically informed training program, Qualitative Health Research, Vol:13, ISSN:1049-7323, Pages:1-16
Murtagh GM, Bezemer J, 2021, ‘Hm no-one says anything, did you notice?’Communication in the operating theatre amidst a hierarchy of expertise, Communication and Medicine, ISSN:1612-1783