“Patient Counseling” by Pharmacists: Advice, Information, or Instruction?

Abstract

In the sociological literature and specifically within the field of conversation analysis (CA), the interactions that occur between health professionals and their clients have been the subject of much analytic work. In particular, there are several widely circulated CA studies examining the broad activity of “counseling” in a health care setting (Silverman 1997; Silverman, Perakyla and Bor 1992; Heritage and Sefi 1992), centring around the distinctions that may be made between “advice” and “information”. This paper considers these distinctions in relation to “patient counseling” by pharmacists and suggests that this may be more fully understood by drawing on the less widely analyzed and distinct activity of “instruction” as described by Goldberg (1975). The wider implications of adopting a CA approach to research this kind of health-care setting are also discussed.