On the phone: Being absent present

Background In hospitals clinicians are being equipped with a mobile phone, in order to improve their availability. The phone cannot be silenced, thus it rings when clinicians are performing tasks or are engaged in interaction. Life word led care requires that clinicians use a perceiving eye, letting senses and emotions work together in order to understand the needs of the other (Martinsen, 2010). When the phone rings, it can diminish the clinicians´attentiveness and thereby perchance compromise their ability to conduct compassionate care. Aim The aim of this study is to explore how the use of mobile phones in hospitals, mediate clinicians’ practices. Method Based on an ethnomethodological approach, video recordings of interactions between clinicians and patients at a Danish hospital were conducted. Nexus Analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) was used as a general methodological framework, complemented with Conversation Analysis (Sacks, 1992) and Goodwin’s (Goodwin, 2000) analytical terminology of contextual configuration. Results The analysis shows how the mobile phone becomes part of the way clinicians arrange their bodies, how they gesture and position themselves in interactions with patients. It is further demonstrated how the ringing of a mobile phones intrudes the action space of an ongoing interaction between clinicians and patients, and changes the trajectories of action. The study thus establishes how the use of mobile phones can distance clinicians from bodily sensing and experiencing the patient, and how the phones can penetrate the boundaries of attention in interactions. Conclusion The study concludes that the use of mobile phones can compromise clinicians´ ability to be sensitive towards the patient, thereby causing the clinicians to unconsciously violate patient dignity and integrity, as they disregard the patient while prioritizing the phone call. The findings call for a discussion of how to use mobile phones in hospitals, intertwined with professional and human values. Keywords Phone, interaction, dignity, integrity, attentiveness