Team talk and problem solving in thoracic medicine.

Abstract

The topic of this article is collaborative problem solving conducted as talk and social interaction in a particular team in the thoracic ward of a Norwegian hospital. The problems to be solved were complex and required a team consisting of participants from diverse medical specialties that met regularly to discuss examination procedures, formulate diagnoses, and decide forms of treatment. Data for the article come from field notes and audio recordings made while the author observed this meeting regularly over more than one year. The aim of the paper is to investigate how team discourse was regulated in ways that served the reproduction of institutional medical standards for problem solving, and also how the meeting had to deal with deviations from institutional standards and attempted to reproduce a certain form of normative orderliness and interaction order.