The (non) use of prioritisation protocols by surgeons.

Priority setting and rationing is a dominant feature of contemporary health policy. In New Zealand, clinical priority assessment criteria (CPAC) tools have been developed to make access to elective surgery more equitable and efficient. Research was undertaken to identify how surgeons used these tools in the consultation.

Nurse and parent partnership during children's vaccinations: a conversation analysis.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to examine the elements of partnership and communication between nurses and parents during actual events of immunization.

Background: Childhood immunizations require collaboration with parents, who may be anxious about immunization safety or subjecting their children to painful procedures.

Methods: Ten interactions during immunization events from six purposively selected general practices were videoed in 2005, giving 168 minutes of talk.

Parents and nurses during the immunization of children--where is the power? A conversation analysis.

Background: Best practice for health care practitioners is considered patient-centred approaches which empower patients. Immunization of young children requires maintaining this approach while retaining professional management.

Objective: The objectives were to assess situations within the immunization event with discordance between health provider and caregiver and evaluate strategies used to empowering parents while obtaining the desired clinical outcome.

Network 'norms' or 'styles' of 'drunken comportment'?

Much of what is qualitatively known about alcohol consumption derives from anthropological studies, focusing on the macro or structural level, involving cultural 'norms' within either 'wet' or 'dry' societies. However, we argue for a meso, social network rather than 'societal' level of analysis and a focus not on societal 'norms', but on 'styles' of 'drunken comportment' within these networks. Although most 'drunken comportment' is acknowledged as excusable by the fact that alcohol has been consumed, some networks place a tighter 'within-limits' boundary on their own behavior than others.

"Knowing one's self" anorexic: implications for therapeutic practice.

Objective: Recent postmodernist studies of anorexia nervosa (AN) challenge current clinical understandings and therapies by illuminating not what AN is but how what it is known to be by clinicians helps construct the disorder and therapy for it. This study points to the equal if not greater importance of how patients know AN.

Methods: Using a deconstructive approach, the discourses of a group of women diagnosed with severe AN were analyzed to reveal radically different versions of "knowing one's self" anorexic.