England2025

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England2025
BibType ARTICLE
Key England2025
Author(s) Ruth England, Marco Pino
Title Handling complainable matters in palliative care interactions
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Palliative Care, Medical EMCA, Complains
Publisher
Year 2025
Language English
City
Month
Journal Discourse Studies
Volume 27
Number 4
Pages 529-546
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/14614456241284509
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

The article uses conversation analysis to investigate how patients and companions complain in palliative care interactions recorded in a UK palliative care setting, and how healthcare professionals (HCPs) respond. The patients’ and companions’ actions do not overtly state, and rather imply, complainable matters for which the co-present HCPs can be seen as responsible. This implicitness affords the HCPs opportunities to address the patients’ and companions’ conveyed concerns as problems in search of practical solutions – rather than grievances. We thus witness the somewhat paradoxical outcome that complaints mobilise remedial actions, but in the process, the one complaining is not treated as complaining after all. We propose that this is a way in which institutional realities pre-empt the overt articulation of nascent complaints. Our analyses show that this is very much the outcome of the interactional work collaboratively accomplished by patients, companions and HCPs. The interactions are in British English.

Notes