Aging Patients’ Repetition of Narrative Topics in Medical Interactions

Using audio-recordings of naturally occurring data in medical interactions, this case study applies a narrative as talk-in-interaction approach to examine aging patients’ narratives, especially how repetition of narrative topics works to maintain the aging patients’ identity in medical interactions.This study demonstrates the ways aging patients tend to speak out and repeat their concerns in conversational narratives, which has implications for the doctor’s pursuit and co-construction of narrative topics with these patients, and in return, may help foster a more humanistic role for doctors in clinical settings.