Abstract
The present study analyzes video-recorded fetal ultrasound scans held in a moderate and high-risk pregnancy ward at a Brazilian public hospital. Informed by Multimodal Conversation Analysis (Mondada, 2018), it investigates the ethnomethods participants employ to manage worry-indicative concerns whose presentation is initiated by pregnant women in a medical exam that does not typically comprise a specific phase for that (Nishizaka, 2010, 2011b, 2014). The analysis shows that pregnant women orient to three environments to request worry-indicative information: (i) topic, (ii) image, (iii) phase transition, tailoring the design of their requests to each particular environment. The findings reveal that pregnant women are highly agentive in finding optimal opportunities to raise their concerns and to mobilize health professionals to respond to them. The physicians performing the scans respond to those requests while dealing with the contingencies inherent to the context of fetal ultrasounds and that have implications in attending to the requests. The results unveil the interplay between the pregnant women’s ethnomethods of raising concerns where ‘normality’ is constantly at stake and the health professionals’ ethnomethods in attending to those demands while orchestrating the distinct semiotic resources involved in the multiactivity setting of ultrasound scans.
Highlights
Normality is understood as an organizing principle of pregnancies (Bredmar & Linell, 1999) that encompasses general considerations on pregnancies as normal events in somebody’s life, and individual considerations on each woman having their pregnancy as normal
In order to observe how the professionals respond to patient presentation of concerns, this paper aims at investigating the management of worry-implicative information requests initiated by pregnant women of moderate and high-risk pregnancies, an under-investigated context by the lenses of Multimodal Conversation Analysis
The data set analyzed in this paper derives from a larger research project (Ostermann, 2013), and consists of interactions held during fetal ultrasound scans that were audio and video recorded between October 2013 and June 2014 at a moderate and high-risk pregnancy department in a public school-hospital[3] in Brazil
Summary
Normality is understood as an organizing principle of pregnancies (Bredmar & Linell, 1999) that encompasses general considerations on pregnancies as normal events in somebody’s life, and individual considerations on each woman having their pregnancy as normal. Patients are regularly invited to talk about their concerns – most frequently starting with the very reason for seeking a medical appointment (e.g., Robinson, 2006; Heritage & Robinson 2006). In those consultations, the presentation of a patient’s concerns – a phase or activity known as ‘problem presentation’ – typically happens at the beginning of the medical visit and as a response to a doctor’s invitation, often done with questions (e.g., “What can I do for you today?” and “What brings you here today?” (Robinson, 2006). Besides orienting to “transitory phases”to raise concerns (Nishizaka, 2010; 2011b; 2014), pregnant women use the topic under discussion and images ‘there-and-’ visually accessible
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