Bernadette WATSON (Fellow)
Fields of Study:
Interdisciplinary communication in health, Health professional and patient communication, Interprofessional education in the health context, Intergroup communication
Profile:
Bernadette Watson is Associate Head of the Department of English at the The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). She is also Director of the International Research Centre for the Advancement of Health Communication (IRCAHC) at PolyU.
Watson is a health psychologist who studies communication. She researches how individuals communicate interpersonally and in groups, primarily in the health context. She conducts research into patient and health professional interactions as well as between multi-disciplinary and multicultural teams of health professionals.
Her focus is on the influence of identity and intergroup processes and how individuals communicate their identity to their speech partners. Her contribution has been to apply and refine theory from a social psychology of language perspective. She has been a member of the International Association of Language and Social Psychology (IALSP) executive from 2000 to 2018 (President 2012-14).
Her research is applied, translational and interdisciplinary. She believes that work in this field can make a practical difference to people’s lives and health. She is Director of the International Research Centre for the Advancement of Health Communication (IRCAHC: www.ircahc.org) at PolyU which is committed to research that can have a practical impact.
She is actively conducting research in Hong Kong and overseas. She has current research collaborations in Australia with both Queensland Hospitals and also with Curtin University in Western Australia. In Hong Kong she is working with hospitals to investigate issues about barriers and facilitators to quality patient care. This continues research that she has been conducting in Australia and the USA.
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