How Do Team-Level and Individual-Level Linguistic Styles Affect Patients’ Emotional Well-Being—Evidence from Online Doctor Teams

Abstract

Background: In the post-epidemic era, online medical care is developing rapidly, and online doctor teams are attracting attention as a high-quality online medical service model that can provide more social support for patients. Methods: Using online doctor teams on the Haodf.com platform as the research subject, this study investigates the key factors in the process of doctor–patient communication, which affects patients’ emotional well-being. We also explore the different roles played by doctors as leaders and non-leaders in doctor–patient communication. From the perspective of language style, we select representative factors in the process of doctor–patient communication, namely the richness of health vocabulary, the expression of emotions, and the use of health-related terms (including perceptual words and biological words). We extract both team-level and individual-level linguistic communication styles through textual and sentiment analysis methods and empirically analyze their effects on patients’ emotional well-being using multiple linear regression models. Results: The results show that the expression of positive emotions by the team and attention to patients’ perceptions and biological conditions benefit patients’ emotional well-being. Leaders should focus on the emotional expression, whereas non-leaders should focus on the use of perceptual and biological words. Conclusions: This study expands the application of linguistic styles in the medical field and provides a practical basis for improving patients’ emotional well-being.