TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘I Have to Explain to him’
T2 - How Companions Broker Mutual Understanding Between Patients with Intellectual Disabilities and Health Care Practitioners in Primary Care
AU - Chinn, Deborah
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Research Trainees Coordinating Centre (PDF-2013-06-060).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/7
Y1 - 2022/7
N2 - People with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience marked health inequalities. This is attributable, at least in part, to suboptimal healthcare communication with health care practitioners (HCPs) whereby patients with ID and HCPs struggle to understand each other. Companions who attend healthcare appointments with patients with ID can support the communicative exchange between patient and HCP, but their involvement can have unintended consequences. This article uses Conversation Analysis (CA) to analyse video-recorded data from primary care health checks involving 24 patients with ID. This method shows that companions use their linguistic and experiential resources to intervene as ‘brokers’ to address real or potential threats to mutual understanding between patients with ID and HCPs. Their interventions can fill in the gaps in knowledge and understanding of the other parties, but also run the risk of deskilling the others in the interaction, by relieving them of the obligation to address communication breakdown directly themselves.
AB - People with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience marked health inequalities. This is attributable, at least in part, to suboptimal healthcare communication with health care practitioners (HCPs) whereby patients with ID and HCPs struggle to understand each other. Companions who attend healthcare appointments with patients with ID can support the communicative exchange between patient and HCP, but their involvement can have unintended consequences. This article uses Conversation Analysis (CA) to analyse video-recorded data from primary care health checks involving 24 patients with ID. This method shows that companions use their linguistic and experiential resources to intervene as ‘brokers’ to address real or potential threats to mutual understanding between patients with ID and HCPs. Their interventions can fill in the gaps in knowledge and understanding of the other parties, but also run the risk of deskilling the others in the interaction, by relieving them of the obligation to address communication breakdown directly themselves.
KW - conversation analysis
KW - doctor-patient communication
KW - intellectual disabilities
KW - primary health care
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128529523&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/10497323221089875
DO - 10.1177/10497323221089875
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85128529523
SN - 1049-7323
VL - 32
SP - 1215
EP - 1229
JO - Qualitative Health Research
JF - Qualitative Health Research
IS - 8-9
ER -