Negotiations in the Care of Chronically Ill Children: Building Possibilities in a Setting of Uncertainty

Abstract

Interested in exploring the construction of the negotiations present in the decision relationships in complex chronic care in pediatric outpatient settings, we approach Anselm Strauss and the concept of negotiated order and Annemarie Mol with the concept of decision logic associated with Latour actor-network theory. We used an ethnographic perspective of health research in the pediatric and stomatherapy outpatient clinics of a hospital located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, from July to December 2017. The interpretation of the field converged to two major axes: diagnosis and therapeutic itineraries, where care was performed through negotiation networks. These concerned the organization of the lives of people related to this care. This whole negotiation process took place in a hybrid scenario, marked by blurring across borders, where caregivers constantly negotiated the recognition of their children. Depending on the spaces and times of interaction, the actors moved through different identities, in a negotiation between how they recognized themselves and how they were recognized by people in complex chronic care. Negotiations in the observed care relationships took place between the uncertainties inherent to the health condition and the possibilities of living with that diagnosis.