Co-constructing the "good mother" in doctor-mother-paediatric patient interactions.
Date
2014-07-28
Authors
Harrison-Train, Candice
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Abstract
This study employs conversation analysis (CA) and membership
categorization analysis (MCA) in an exploration of the interactional
organization of talk between doctors and the mothers (or the female
guardians acting as “proxy mothers”) of HIV-positive child patients being
treated at a paediatric hospital in the Western Cape, South Africa, in 2003.
The analysis focuses on how the HIV paediatric consultation is co-constructed
between the doctor and the mother/guardian, and how interactional choices
on the part of the participants shape the course of the consultation. Specific
attention is placed on how participants orient to, hear, respond to and coconstruct
the category of “mother”, along with the emergent inferences of
what constitutes “good mothering” in the context of pursuing the wellbeing of
the HIV-positive child who - as it emerges in certain cases - has evidently
been infected by the mother in the first instance. As its core focus, this study
examines how orienting to “good mothering” is done - in a moment-bymoment,
collaborative and co-constructed manner – in the immediate course
of the doctor/mother/guardian consultation. This involves considering the
interplay of shifts in orientations to “motherly responsibility” and “doctorly
responsibility”, and how these shifts are collaboratively activated, negotiated
and responded to, as the consultation proceeds.
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Keywords
Conversation analysis, Membership categorization analysis, Mother, Paediatric doctor, Patient, HIV