An Ethnomethodological Study of Training Sessions on Requesting Inter-hospital Patient Transfer: The Case of an Exercise in the Trauma and Critical Center

Abstract

This paper examines training sessions on conducting inter-hospital patient transfer requests held at the trauma and critical center based on ethnomethodology. Focusing specifically on the lecturer’s activities, the paper describes the lecturer methods for instructing junior doctors for making patient transfer requests. The lecturer organizes the training session by dividing it into two tasks—reporting a case internally to the hospital to understand the patient’s details and requesting patient transfer to an external hospital. By doing so, he tries to convey practical knowledge required to make patient transfer requests in comparison with reporting a case internally. Thus, by focusing on how members accomplish their work, this paper has achieved to present member’s both methods for making patient transfer requests as well as for conveying the method to junior doctors.