Research
Research
My current research divides fairly evenly between the basic practices of ordinary (social) interaction, and the communicative practices in medicine, usually in doctor-patient interaction. I’m working in broadly four principal areas, two each in basic research and in medical interactions. These are:
My current research divides fairly evenly between the basic practices of ordinary (social) interaction, and the communicative practices in medical interactions, usually doctor-patient interactions. I’m working in broadly four principal areas, two each in basic research and in medical interactions. These are:
Repair and self-correction: Whilst much is known about the mechanisms and practices of repair and self-correction, rather less is understood about what speakers do or achieve through correcting themselves. I’m working on the normative implications of self-correction – focusing on how speakers quite systematically correct themselves in such a way as to change (correct) to a normatively appropriate construction or form for implementing a certain action.
Drew, P. et al, (2013) Self-repair and action construction. In Hayashi, M., Raymond, G. and Sidnell, J. (Eds.), Conversational Repair and Human Understanding. Cambridge University Press: 71-94.
Recruitment of assistance (with Kobin Kendrick): The recruitment of assistance constitutes a basic organisational problem for participants in social interaction. One of the most ubiquitous and abiding features of our social lives, indeed of human sociality itself, is that we need, seek, receive or are offered assistance by others, in small things (e.g., help in opening a tight-fitting lid) as well as in larger matters. As was acknowledged by Adam Smith, anticipating Erving Goffman (Man continually standing in need of the assistance of others, must fall upon some means to procure their help, Adam Smith, 1763), minor acts of assistance are essential in enabling us to manage the tasks of our ordinary, daily social lives; without such assistance we might struggle to manage certain tasks at all. Kobin and I are exploring the methods through which recruitments of assistance are managed.
Kendrick, K. & Drew, P. (2016) Recruitment: offers, requests, and the organization of assistance in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 49: 1-19.
Drew, P. & Kendrick, K. (2017) Searching for trouble: recruiting assistance through embodied action. Social Interaction: Video-based Studies of Human Sociality, 1
Telephone delivery of low-intensity (CBT) therapy for patients with anxiety and depression: This is an NIHR-funded study, ‘Enhancing the quality of psychological interventions delivered by telephone’ (EQUITy), a 5-year programme of multi-disciplinary research, led and coordinated by Penny Bee and Peter Bowers at the University of Manchester, which aims to improve the way that psychological interventions are delivered over the telephone. My role has been to analyse – with Annie Irvine (King’s College London) - the interaction between patients and practitioners in telephone-mediated therapy sessions, in a number of centres around the country.
Irvine, A., Drew, P. et al. (2020) Patient choice in the delivery of the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services. Sociology of Health & Illness. DOI: 0.1111/1467-9566.13182
Drew, P, Irvine, A. et al. (2021) Telephone delivery of psychological therapies: Balancing protocol with patient-centred care. Social Science & Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113818
Conversations between doctors and parents in neonatal intensive care: In collaboration with neonatologists and medical researchers at UCL’s EGA Institute for Women's Health, I am studying decision making in neonatal intensive care, in conversations between neonatal doctors and the parents of very sick (often very premature) babies. The decisions largely concern treatment, including the possibility of redirecting care from full intensive care to palliative care. Using conversation analysis, our findings are beginning to suggest that certain linguistic formats used by doctors to explain a baby’s current state of were more likely than others to result in alignment between doctors and parents. The most recent development of this project is a planned study of interpreted conversations (English-Urdu/Mirpuri) in perinatal care, to be conducted with neonatologists at hospitals in Bradford and Leeds.
Shaw, C., Connabeer, K., Drew, P., Gallagher, K., Aladangady, N. & Marlow, N. (2019) Initiating end-of-life decisions with parents of infants receiving neonatal intensive care. Patient Education and Counselling. doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2020.02.013
Research group(s)
- University of York’s Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Communication
