PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Communication between medical practitioners and patients are in many cases ineffective, with consequences ranging from inadequate health facilities to malpractice cases. The problems may also be related to the intercultural differences in interpreting medical practitioner-patient relations based on different expectations and interpretations, attributed to the verbal and nonverbal symbols exchanged between the two parties. Based on a phenomenological perspective, this study aimed to explore those communication barriers as perceived by medical practitioners. This study employed a qualitative research method, interviewing 28 medical practitioners. The results of the study showed that there were four main barriers encountered by medical practitioners when dealing with patients in their therapeutic communication. These barriers were related to: (1) cultural differences; (2) educational differences; (2) time barrier; and (4) psychological differences.