Maintaining a Distinction Between Possible and Impossible Topics of Conversation in the Outpatient Respiratory Medical Clinic

Abstract

The aim of this study is to generate a grounded theory explaining patterns of behavior among health care professionals (HCPs) during interactions with patients in outpatient respiratory medical clinics. The findings suggest that the HCPs managed contradictory expectations to the interaction by maintaining a distinction between possible and impossible topics to counseling. Three subcategories explaining the effort that maintain the impossible and possible topics separated were identified: (a) an effort to maintain the diseased lungs as the main task in counseling, (b) navigating interactions to avoid strong emotions of suffering in patients to reveal, (c) avoiding the appearance of the non-alterable life circumstances of the patients. The HCPs’ attitudes toward what patients could be offered generated a distance and a difficulty during counseling and created further suffering in the patients but likewise a discomfort and frustration among the HCPs.