‘It's something for you both to think about’: choice and decision making in nuchal translucency screening for Down's syndrome

Policies and practices around antenatal screening services have long been the subject of debate in a sociological context. However, existing research has largely overlooked the way in which the policies and practices that underpin antenatal screening services are enacted through talk between pregnan...

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Published in	Sociology of health & illness Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 511 - 530
Main Author	Pilnick, Alison
Format	Journal Article
Language	English
Published	Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.05.2008 Blackwell
Subjects	Acknowledgment antenatal screening Choice Behavior Choices Conversation conversation analysis Debates Decision Making Down syndrome Down Syndrome - diagnosis Down Syndrome - diagnostic imaging Down's syndrome Female Health Care Services Health services Hospitals, Teaching Humans informed choice Interviews as Topic Medical Decision Making Medical personnel Medical screening Medical sociology Mentally disabled Midwifery Midwives Nuchal Translucency Measurement Pain Parents Pregnancy Pregnancy Trimester, First Prenatal care Prenatal testing Referral and Consultation Sociological research Sociology Sociology of health and medicine Tests Ultrasonography, Prenatal United Kingdom Women Pregnancy Decision Making informed choice Information antenatal screening conversation analysis
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ISSN	0141-9889 1467-9566 1467-9566
DOI	10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01071.x

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Summary:	Policies and practices around antenatal screening services have long been the subject of debate in a sociological context. However, existing research has largely overlooked the way in which the policies and practices that underpin antenatal screening services are enacted through talk between pregnant women and their health professionals. This paper focuses on one such policy, that of informed choice. It uses data from 14 tape‐recorded pre‐screening consultations with community midwives, forming part of a newly introduced nuchal translucency screening programme, to examine how the issue of choice is topicalised and discussed. It concludes that, whilst there is clear evidence that midwives are at pains to explicitly invoke the issue of decision making, there are other more subtle factors in the interactional presentation of screening tests that serve to undermine whether and how a recognition of choice is received by pregnant women.
Bibliography:	SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 14 ObjectType-Article-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:	0141-9889 1467-9566 1467-9566
DOI:	10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01071.x