Trust and truth: uncertainty in health care practice

Uncertainty is the ubiquitous presence across health care. It is usually understood in terms of decision making, 'knowing' the correct diagnosis or understanding how the human body works. Using the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Georges Canguilhem and Tim Ingold, I outline a story of journeying and habitation, and argue that while uncertainty for practitioners may be about enhancing theoretical knowledge, for patients it is about knowing how to act in a taken-for-granted and largely unconscious way in a world that has become uncertain, and in which the main tool of action, the human body, no longer functions with the certainty it once had. In this situation, the role of the practitioner is first and foremost to recognize the uncertainty that has emerged in the patient's 'habitation' and to reassure them by enabling them to have a new or restored confidence in their body so that they can act with certainty.