Health professionals’ knowledge discourses concerning health: a qualitative study in Norway

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the body of professional knowledge about discourses of health. To our knowledge, no previous studies have focused on how health professionals who are being educated or have recently graduated as master’s students in health science have expanded and deepened their discussion of health. Therefore, the current study aimed to explore health professionals’ knowledge discourses concerning health developed at the master’s degree level. A discourse analysis approach based on the ethnomethodological discourse analytical tradition was chosen. Group interviews were used to collect data. Each group consisted of four participants. All participants were Norwegian; specifically, there were eleven women and one man, all of whom were aged between 29 and 49 years and had heterogeneous health professional backgrounds. The results were formulated as two discourses: 1) a health idea-oriented knowledge discourse and 2) a health context-oriented knowledge discourse. A discourse of health idea-oriented knowledge was supplemented with a discourse of health context-oriented knowledge, indicating that health professionals’ understanding of health was further developed. This study concluded that knowledge discourses concerning health developed at the master’s degree level represent a renewal of health professionals’ discursive practice more than a revision of discourses dominant at the bachelor’s degree level.