An interactional structure of medical activities during acute visits and its implications for patients' participation

Within the context of primary-care, physician-patient visits, researchers have documented both patients' low levels of communicative participation (e.g., question asking) and the advantages of such participation to healthcare (e.g., improved physical health and satisfaction). Prior research has offered a variety of partial, non-exclusive explanations for patients' low levels of participation. This article investigates one underdeveloped source of explanation: the organization of interaction itself. This article argues that the establishment of new medical problems in acute visits makes relevant an organized structure of social action that is composed of an ordered series of medical activities: establishing the reason for the visit, physicians gathering additional information (i.e., history taking and physical examination), physicians delivering diagnoses, and physicians providing treatment recommendations. This "project" of medical activity shapes physicians' and patients' understanding and production of communicative behavior. Using the method of conversation analysis, and analyzing transcribed audio- and videotape data of actual acute visits, this article describes and grounds this project and discusses its implications for research, theory, and improvement on patient participation.