Interactivity in health care: bodies, values and dynamics

Abstract

This paper discusses recent paradigm changes in linguistics as well as other scientific disciplines in order to stress how such changes affect interactional approaches to health care. It argues that moving from a reductionist to a more holistic and trans-disciplinary approach to human interactivity entails a rethinking of both theory and methodology. The paper takes a distributed approach to a single case study, a simulated emergency situation at a Danish hospital. It claims that viewing health care practice as distributed and dialogical can promote caring practices that minimise human errors and save lives. While one aim is to contribute to the understanding of expertise in action, the focus is on interactivity, and thus on how practitioners do treatment together as a joint problem solving process. The paper focuses on interactional phenomena that indicate values realisation, role hierarchies, and how affordances shape action. It concludes by suggesting how to provide opportunities for dialogical practices that realise values that are appropriate to practitioners, patients, and problem solving.