The legal responsibility of the physician for the communicative incompetence
Initially, Spitzberg (1988) defined communication competence as “the ability to interact well with others”. He explains, “the term ‘well’ refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness”. A much more complete operationalization is provided by Friedrich (1994) when he suggests that communication competence is best understood as “a situational ability to set realistic …
