O.2.1 Doctor-patient communication: An intercultural research agenda: Presenter(s): Mariana Lazzaro-Salazar, Universidad Catolica Del Maule, Chile.

Communication in the doctor-patient relationship is vital to today's globalized world where health professionals and patients constitute a very diverse socio-demographic and socio-cultural composition, and, thus, have different expectations and assumptions of how such communication should develop. In this light, the aim of this paper was to conduct a systematic and critical review of studies that examine intercultural communication in the doctor-patient relationship, with the purpose of synthesizing its findings, assessing its limitations and proposing future lines of research that move this field of studies forward. To that end, a set of advanced searches was performed in the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Scielo. The use of the PRISMA methodology in the systematic review allowed the identification of 27 articles that 1) had the main purpose of investigating communication in the intercultural interaction between doctors and patients, 2) involved graduate doctors who were active medical professionals, and 3) collected empirical data regarding the role of intercultural communication in the doctor-patient relationship. We analyzed the articles' aims, variables, methodology, context of study, main findings, and publishing journals and their impact factors to draw conclusions from studies in international contexts, with a particular focus on studies conducted in Latin America. In general terms, our analysis showed that in most of the articles reviewed, interculturality is insufficiently theorized, variables or categories are not specified and communication is examined very superficially. Furthermore, interculturality is approached almost exclusively in terms of the national origin of the participants. Although a very balanced distribution between quantitative studies and qualitative studies is observed, only a few studies draw on natural data collected from video-recordings of medical consultations. To conclude, the paper offers an intercultural communication research agenda that includes recommendations on research topics and variables, theoretical perspectives and methodological contributions to conduct future investigations on the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]