Patient-Initiated Pain Expressions: Interactional Asymmetries and Consequences for Cancer Care

Abstract

Only minimal attention has been given to analyzing interactional moments when patients and providers talk about “pain” in general consultations and primary care, and no attention has focused on how pain gets managed during oncology interviews. Conversation analysis (CA) is used to examine a sampling of instances drawn from a collection of 146 pain instances across 65 video recorded and transcribed clinical encounters in a comprehensive cancer clinic. Specific attention is drawn to how pain descriptions are not static but malleable as cancer patients upgrade, downgrade, and produce combined orientations when making their experiences available to oncologists. In response, it is shown that doctors acknowledge patients’ descriptions, but do not elaborate nor affiliate with, important pain disclosures. Three interactional environments are closely examined: 1) Reporting and responding to past pain/hurt incidents; 2) Doctor’s missing assessments in response to good news announcements about patients’ minimal pain; and 3) Patient-initiated pain responses to doctors’ questions. These empirical findings confirm identified patterns of interactional asymmetries comprising pain events in UK consultations and USA primary care. Close examination of these social actions provides basic knowledge about how pain communication reframes historical understandings of individuals’ pain experiences. Implications for future research are identified, and a protocol is described for how clinical practice and medical education can be improved by refining understandings of pain communication to promote increased sensitivities and more personalized responses to pain expressions.