International and national collaboration

We have ongoing international and national collaborations with several researchers and institutions

Our collaborative research covers a wide range of topics:

1) CLINICAL INTERACTION IN CONTEXT - a narrative exploration of 212 naturally occurring GP consultations (more information available here)

2) TEXT-BASED REPRESENTATIONS OF CANCER; a study within the project RETHINKING CANCER SURVIVORSHIP - exploring the foundations of research on how humans experience and voice cancer in a Norwegian context (more information available here)

3) GEOGRAPHICAL INEQUALITY IN OUT-PATIENT CONSULTATIONS for children with digestive and neurological conditions – a cultural perspective

Further details in personal websites.

Publications

Lian OS, Nettleton S, Wifstad Å and Dowrick C (2021) Modes of Interaction in Naturally Occurring Medical Encounters with General Practitioners: The ´One in a Million´ Study. Qualitative Health Research 31(6): 1129-1143. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732321993790.

Lian OS, Nettleton S, Wifstad Å and Dowrick C (2021) Negotiating Uncertainty in Clinical Encounters: A Narrative Exploration of Naturally Occurring Primary Care Consultations. Social Science & Medicine 291 (114467). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114467

Lian OS, Nettleton S, Grange H and Dowrick C (2022) “I’m not the doctor; I’m just the patient”: Patient agency and shared decision-making in naturally occurring primary care consultations. Patient Education and Counceling 105(7): 1996-2004. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2021.10.031

Lian OS, Nettleton S, Grange H and Dowrick C (2023) ‘It feels like my metabolism has shut down’. Negotiating interactional roles and epistemic positions in a primary care consultation. Health Expectations 26(1): 366-375. DOI: 10.1111/hex.13666 (in press)

Our most recent book projects

Åge Wifstad: Helsefagenes etikk. En innføring. 2. utgave. Universitetsforlaget 2020.

Olaug S. Lian: Contested Chronic Conditions Fused With Medical Uncertainty: Gendered Perspectives, in “Ageing, the Body and the Gender Regime: Health, illness and disease across the life course”, Routledge 2020.

Åge Wifstad: “Vitenskapsteori for helsefagene”, Universitetsforlaget 2018.

Olaug S. Lian: Women With Long-Term Exhaustion in Fictional Literature: A Comparative Approach, in "Reading the Psychosomatic in Medical and Popular Culture: Something. Nothing. Everything”, Routledge 2018.

Teaching

The research group chairs two master courses (sociology and ethics on the Public Health - master program), and one PhD-course (HEL-8028 Analysing Qualitative Data).

Fingerprints 2021-2023

MedHum Seminar Series 2019-2020

Monday 20th of January 10.15-15.00 (MH L11.104):

The Practice of Vulnerable Reading: A Workshop in Health Humanities

Professor of sociology Arthur Frank (Canada)

Vulnerable reading understands literature as a resource for both ill persons and healthcare workers, because both suffer, albeit in different ways. Their vulnerabilities range from physical distress to task overload and alienated relationships. To vulnerable persons, literature offers characters whose troubles mirror their own, and stories that can instigate new understandings of their own story.

This workshop will consider how Shakespeare’s King Lear depicts different forms of human suffering, making it a resource for those who feel vulnerable. We will begin with a short synopsis of the play, and then structure our discussion by progressing through five layers of questioning: (1) reading for the characters, (2) reading for the plot, (3) reading for dialogical relationships, (4) reading for vulnerabilities and suffering, and (5) reading for a sense of rightness in how characters act, how the author tells the tale, and how we as readers respond. As time allows, we will do reflective writing in response to prompts exploring each layer and how they interrelate.

Participation: 

The workshop is intended for scholars and professionals interested in health humanities. The objective is to prepare participants for teaching health humanities, facilitating groups that practice vulnerable reading, and incorporating vulnerable reading in personal and professional writing. The workshop will be experiential, but its emphasis is professional.

Participants’ experience of the workshop would be enhanced by reading the attached paper (Frank 2019 "Who´s there?"- see right column); seeing a DVD of King Lear or reading the play. Reading different versions is useful: Lear has been retold as a graphic novel and as novels set in the present, exemplified by Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. But no specific preparation is expected.

Arthur W. Frank has been studying illness experience and clinical responses to suffering for three decades, beginning with his memoir of critical illness, At the Will of the Body (1991). His present work turns to fiction as a way of rethinking the question asked in The Wounded Storyteller (1995): what is the relationship between embodied suffering and narrative representations of suffering? How can narration help? Vulnerable reading also develops the idea of companion stories, introduced in Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-narratology (2010). Vulnerable reading seeks to discover what is companionable in works of literature generally, and in this workshop, what is companionable in Shakespeare.

Arthur W. Frank, Professor Emeritus, University of Calgary

www.arthurwfrank.ca 

Contested Chronic Conditions: Archive of National conference 2017

National conferenceonference held in 2017

Program archived in EVENT page - for the record

Patient perspectives entail an experiential kind of situated and embodied knowledge.The importance and value of creating health care services centred on the patient perspective is increasingly recognised, and patient engagement is incorporated in many clinical and political initiatives. In the White Paper Meld. St. 26 (2014–2015) The primary health and care services of tomorrow – localised and integrated, the Government presents crucial steps towards this goal: “Future-oriented services take decisions in consultation with the users, are concerned about the users’ goals, needs and desires for their own lives, and use this as a basis for determining which services to provide and how they should be designed”.

In the Contested Chronic Conditions: Patients Perspectives conference we explored the role of Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in health care service provision and discussed how such involvement might be achieved, particularly in relation to contested chronic conditions. The conference marked the ending of a research project funded by a grant from the Research Council of Norway. 

Consultations between health care workers and people with contested chronic conditions, often referred to as medically unexplained physical symptom (MUPS), are among the most challenging clinical encounters in contemporary Western societies. These encounters are often imbued in conflict between health care workers who report feeling inadequate and resentful in these consultations, and patients who describe experiences of being blamed, disbelieved and left without any adequate help or support. The main aim of the conference was to discuss the importance and value of the patient perspective in the context of contested chronic conditions and, hopefully, advance engagement between those who deliver health care services and those who receive them.

The conference took place at Sommarøya Arctic Hotel, located at the stunningly beautiful island of Sommarøya (55 minutes from Tromsø ariport by car). The hotel was voted "Norway’s Best Summer Hotel" by the readers of Reiser og Ferie and Nettavisen in 2010, and rated among the 25 best hotels in Norway on Tripadvisor in 2013. In 2014, MANN magazine named the hotel on a list of “50 places in the world you should visit before you die”.

Source of funding: The Norwegian Research Council

Scientific committee: Sarah Nettleton, Catherine Robson and Olaug S. Lian (head of team)