Weighing in primary-care nurse-patient interactions.
This article analyzes the interactions through which primary-care nurses and patients accomplish patient weighing. The analysis is based on videotaped nurse-adult patient interactions in clinics in the area of Southern California. Detailed examination of co-participants' naturally situated weighing conduct shows that parties recurrently deliver utterances that go beyond that required to accomplish weight measurement-precisely "where" they "are" within the weighing process shaping how they produce and understand these utterances. Using weighing as a locus of epistemic negotiation and potential affiliation, co-participants interactionally achieve the distribution of weight/weighing knowledge and the character of their social relationship. Confronting their numerical weight results in a social/medical setting, patients can use expansive weighing utterances to claim or demonstrate that they possess pre-existing knowledge regarding weight, asserting independent expertise vis-à-vis nurses and claiming result co-recipiency and co-ownership. Speakers can also use expansive utterances to proffer an interactional opportunity for affiliation, inviting recipients to collaborate in producing a more personalized encounter. Through the acceptance or declination of these invitations, the parties work out "who" they "are" to and for one another.
Pillet-Shore
Danielle
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Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095-1551, USA. dpillet@ucla.edu
D001294:Attitude to Health; D001835:Body Weight; D002140:California; D003142:Communication; D005194:Family Practice / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D017008:Negotiating; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D010808:Physical Examination / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D012962:Sociology, Medical; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis