The social organisation of chemotherapy treatment consultations

Abstract

This paper analyses doctor-patient interaction at the outpatients consultations of a Medical Oncology Service in a Spanish public hospital. First, it introduces the cultural and institutional setting of the research. It then describes some details of the sequential organisation of the routine encounters between patients undertaking chemotherapy and their doctors. Three conventionalised doctors' utterances ('How are you', 'How are you tolerating the treatment', and 'The tests are fine') are shown to be crucial for assessment and treatment activities. It then discusses how the use of these tokens affects the dimension of casual/institutional talk, and doctor-patient interactional asymmetry. The analysis pays special attention to the way in which treatment decisions are grounded in and projected by the assessment activities in the encounter. The discussion considers how the interactive resources deployed in the consultation relate to the incorporation of patients' views in routine decisions.