Abstract
In caring practices for elderly peoples or patients with physical dysfunction, sufferings not subject to control or medical cure are one of the main objects of care. Previous studies have emphasized patient narration of their sufferings to caregivers as crucial to care and support.
However, this emphasis overlooks patients’ practices for communicating their problems to practitioners. By analyzing data from home visit medical massaging sessions with conversation analytical method, this study investigates how patients complain their sufferings beyond control using the structure of the service.
In massaging sessions, there is a procedural track of medicalization. When patients complain their problem related to any bodily condition, massaging therapists identify the body part, assure the existence of the problem, and give a treatment in order to incorporate the presented problem into massaging procedure.
Patients articulate their suffering by differentiating the ongoing interaction from this track of medicalization. Patients resist or block massagers’ activity such as problem identification or make complaints as a side activity in order to separate their complaints from a request of any special care. This fact suggests that patients’ sufferings are expressed negatively in home medical massaging sessions. However, this asymmetry does not suppress the patients’ narration or experience. The investigated practice also shows that patients use this asymmetrical structure of massaging sessions in order to articulate the nature of their problems.
