Distribution of visual orientations in prenatal ultrasound examinations: When the healthcare provider looks at the pregnant woman's face

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore an aspect of the organization of participation, that is, the organization of the appropriate distribution of participants’ orientations, through the analysis of 32 video-recordings of prenatal ultrasound examinations. Ultrasound examinations are distinctive in that the major fields that the participants need to visually orient to, that is, the monitor screen and the pregnant woman's abdomen, are located distally from each other, and from the faces of the participants. In this environment, it is very infrequent for the healthcare provider to look at the face of the pregnant woman during the ultrasound demonstration. I elucidate a procedural ground for the production of this conduct by healthcare providers, and argue that healthcare providers’ gazes to pregnant women's faces instantiate a practice oriented specifically to displaying that their (the healthcare providers’) occasioned actions in progress be received as such. This practice can also be employed to mark the occasioned-by nature of the utterances in progress. Ultrasound examinations are a ‘perspicuous site’ for the investigation of the organization of participation.