Goal
In our project we study interaction in health care consultations from the perspective of touch and affect. We have video-recordings from Finnish, English and Chinese consultations. In this project we aim to:
1) Describe the role of emotion, touch and other intercorporeal resources in realizing affect-intensive institutional tasks in medical and health care interaction and locate potential generic patterns in managing the interplay of touch and affect in different situational and cultural contexts.
2) To provide a systematic and empirically grounded basis for quantification and experimental
research regarding the role of embodied interaction in specific contexts of health care.
3) To provide knowledge for making optimal choices in replacing face-to-face health care services
with digital ones in the future (e.g. video-mediated consultations).
4) To develop empirically and observationally based methodology and theory on interaffectivity
through touch in health care interaction.
Impact
The results of our project will produce information on the daily interaction sequences with patients of the medical consultations. The produced knowledge may be used to help the medical professionals to deal with difficult situations in their daily work, for example in procedures that may induce pain or fear for the patients. The results can be used to show how medical procedures that require touch can be executed in an efficient and harmonous manner between the health care professionals and patients. We aim to produce theoretical and methodological tools to approach touch and affects in interaction. Furthermore, we will display what kind of role touch and affect plays in the institutional health care interactions.
This study is conducted during the years 2021–2025.
Funding
The Academy of Finland