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Team talk and the evaluation of medical guidance documentation

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Neil Jenkings

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Abstract

This article looks at team talk in a validation committee meeting assessment of a guidance document text item. The item assessment was not evidence-based in terms of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) criteria; instead, the item was assessed via the committee members present drawing on their clinical practitioner members’ knowledge and professional experience. Analysis of the meeting reveals such apparently ‘mere opinion’ to be a systematic evaluation of professional knowledge and personal experiences, in ways ‘compatible’ with thought experiments. Thought experiments are argued to be a members’ resource as well as an analyst's one, although their detailed occasionedness is not reducible to a constructivist formalisation. The article's approach is informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and while the use of thought experiments as a heuristic device in the analysis is controversial, a warrant for this is attempted. The research was undertaken to locate ways of understanding and supporting team members’ work of robust and useful guidance content production. ‘Validating’ guidance is shown in-and-as the emergent collaborative work of the committee members themselves.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Jenkings KN

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Communication & Medicine

Year: 2024

Volume: 19

Issue: 3

Pages: 241-255

Print publication date: 10/11/2024

Online publication date: 28/02/2025

Acceptance date: 13/02/2024

ISSN (print): 1612-1783

ISSN (electronic): 1613-3625

Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd

URL: https://doi.org/10.1558/cam.25960

DOI: 10.1558/cam.25960

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