Calming emotional 911 callers: Using redirection as a patient-focused directive in emergency medical calls

Abstract

Callers making an emergency phone call can exhibit emotional displays about a current situation characterized by different forms of conduct such as shouting, howling each spoken word, speech distortion, crying, pleas for help, expressions such as “Oh God” (Whalen and Zimmerman, 1998). Since emotional outbursts can derail the call's progress, emotional callers are considered ‘non-compliant’ with the primary task, and dispatchers face practical challenges with caller management. Findings show how using a modal verb format can redirect callers to focus on a patient's care. Using conversation analysis, this article illustrates dispatchers' methods for redirecting an emotional caller's attention to complete a task, which works to calm callers and sustain their attention for the call's duration.