Using conversation analysis to examine decision-making in conversations about life-sustaining treatments

In her webinar Dr Sterie will provide a short introduction to medical Conversation Analysis. Then, she will show how she used it to investigate data from a recent project, consisting of audio-recordings of discussions about whether or not a patient should be resuscitated in case of cardiac arrest. Such discussions take place routinely at the patient’s admission to the hospital, between the physician and the patient. By using this approach she examined phenomena such as how physicians ask patients what they desire, how patients refer to the relevancy or irrelevancy of life-sustaining treatments, and ultimately how decision making is accomplished.

For an overview of study results, see:

Sterie, A. C., Weber, O., Jox, R. J., & Truchard, E. R. (2021). ” Do you want us to try to resuscitate?”: Conversational practices generating patient decisions regarding cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Patient Education and Counseling. (2021) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738399121005024

Sterie, A. C., Jones, L., Jox, R. J., & Truchard, E. R. (2021). ‘It’s not magic’: A qualitative analysis of geriatric physicians’ explanations of cardio‐pulmonary resuscitation in hospital admissions. Health Expectations.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hex.13212

Moderator

Dr Anca Sterie is a medical sociologist working at the Lausanne University Hospital, in Switzerland. She uses conversation analysis in her research on healthcare communication and for developing communication training for clinicians.

Time stated is GMT