Article published In:
Narratives as Social Practice in Organisational ContextsEdited by Dorien Van De Mieroop, Jonathan Clifton and Stephanie Schnurr
[Narrative Inquiry 32:1] 2022
► pp. 9–35
Edited by Dorien Van De Mieroop, Jonathan Clifton and Stephanie Schnurr
[Narrative Inquiry 32:1] 2022
► pp. 9–35
Narrative evaluation in patient feedback
A study of online comments about UK healthcare services
This study examines how patients use narratives to evaluate their experiences of healthcare services online. The
analysis draws on corpus linguistic techniques, specifically annotation, applying Labov and
Waletzky’s (1967) framework to a sample of online comments about the NHS in England. Narratives are pervasive in this
context, being present more than absent in the patients’ comments, but are particularly prominent in comments which evaluate care
negatively. Evaluations can be accomplished through all the structural elements of the narrative, including in combination with
one another. However, the presence and ordering of these elements does not seem to be influenced by the type of evaluation given
(i.e. positive, negative or more neutral). As mediated social practice, the narratives are shaped by the technological affordances and
social dynamics of this context, for instance in the placement of particular structural elements and the design of narratives for
particular “imagined” audiences.
Keywords: patient feedback, Health Communication, NHS, narrative, annotation
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Data and analytical approach
- 3.1Data
- 3.2Analytical approach
- 4.Analysis
- 4.1Abstract
- 4.2Orientation
- 4.3Complication
- 4.4Evaluation
- 4.5Resolution
- 4.6Coda
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
-
References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].
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