Contradictions and Predicaments in Instructors' Boundary Negotiations of Students' Health Disclosures. Issue 7 (7th June 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Price, Sarah F.; Carmack, Heather J.; Kuang, Kequing
• Is Part Of: Health communication. Volume 36:Issue 7(2021)
• Page Start: 795
• Page End: 803
• Publication Date: 2021-06-07
• Subjects: Communication in medicine -- Periodicals; Health in mass media -- Periodicals; 362.1014
• DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1712525
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1041-0236

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Students often disclose personal health information to their instructors for a variety of reasons. This puts instructors in an awkward position where they must negotiate the students' disclosure and what to do with the information. The authors conducted in-depth individual interviews with 23 university professors and identified three recurring tensions in the ways in which participants discussed their responses and actions based on student health disclosures: (1) encouraging and discouraging student disclosure, (2) changing and maintaining the instructor-student interactions based on the disclosure, and (3) personal involvement and professional detachment in responding to students' disclosures. For instructors, communication privacy negotiation is more than a negotiation of privacy boundaries and co-ownership of information on the part of the instructor; it becomes a form of self-preservation and personal health navigation, which then dictates future interactions of instructors when students disclose personal health information.