The Collective Voice Legitimation Strategies in Focus Group Discussions with Nurses in Municipal Palliative Care for Older People in Sweden

Summary, in English

This paper explores focus group discussions of registered nurses in municipal palliative care for older people, using data collected by researchers with an interest in health sciences. The linguisti- cally based discourse analyis builds on a combi- nation of Bakhtinian notions of dialogicity, the Other and addressivity, the use of quotations, and also van Leeuwen’s framework for legitima- tion in discourse. The aim is to investigate strat- egies of addressing and legitimizing palliative care.

Three types of narrative are discerned: the cautionary tale, fictionalization of profession- al experiences and the enactment of a fictive dialogue. The other professions involved (phy- sicians, assistant nurses) are positioned as the Other as a means of legitimizing the perspec- tives of the registered nurses. As the patients and their next of kin are the objects of profes- sional activities, the notion of the Third (con- necting to the Other) is proposed. The objectifi- cation is a manifestation of commitment with routinized and professional distance to the patients.

• Author: Henrik Rahm; Magdalena Andersson; Anna-Karin Edberg
• Department/s: Centre for Languages and Literature
• Publishing year: 2014
• Language: English
• Pages: 167-177
• Publication/Series: Communication & Medicine. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Healthcare, Ethics and Society
• Volume: Volume 11(2) (2014)
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/cam.v11i2.20116
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Equinox Publishing
• Topic: Nursing
• Keywords: palliative care; the Other; nurses; legitimation; discourse analysis; dialogicity; addressivity
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1613-3625