Discourse types and (re)distribution of responsibility in simulated emergency team encounters

Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad*, Ellen Andenæs, Stine Gundrosen, Srikant Sarangi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Successful teamwork, constitutive of team talk, depends largely on shared responsibility in the coordination of tasks in a goal-oriented way. This paper examines how specific modes of talk or 'discourse types' are utilised by a healthcare team in simulated emergency care. The data corpus comprises six video-recorded simulation training sessions in an emergency department at a large Norwegian hospital. Our analysis focuses on the critical moment when the original healthcare team is joined by other specialists in an ad hoc manner, which necessitates the (re)distribution of expert responsibility in the management of the patient's condition. We examine the interactional trajectories and, in particular, the discourse types surrounding the critical moment which marks the incorporation of the new team members. The analysis centres on three discourse types (online commentary, offline commentary and metacommentary) that are utilised in accomplishing the multiple tasks in a collaborative and coordinated fashion. We suggest that team talk overlays and overlaps with distributed medical work in highly charged decision-making contexts such as emergency care. The findings have relevance for how healthcare professionals and students are trained in multidisciplinary team talk and teamwork.

Original languageEnglish
JournalCommunication & Medicine - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Healthcare, Ethics and Society
Volume13
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)51-70
Number of pages20
ISSN1612-1783
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Activity type
  • Discourse types
  • Metacommentary
  • Offline commentary
  • Online commentary
  • Simulated emergency medicine
  • Team talk

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Discourse types and (re)distribution of responsibility in simulated emergency team encounters'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this