External Cavity Diode Laser for Ultra-cold Atom Experiments

This thesis describes the design, construction and characterization of an external cavity diode laser (ECDL) within the context of AMO research – specifically, ultracold rubidium experiments. The main benefit over other forms of laser light is the ECDL’s low cost and narrow linewidth. Having a more narrow linewidth allows us to affect specific electron states, such as for laser cooling, more precisely than broader alternatives. We find that building such a laser in house is feasible with scan range up to 4 GHz. We also note that attention to external noise, through mechanical vibrations but more importantly through temperature drifts, is necessary to produce an ECDL with a stable optical frequency

The impact of using computer decision-support software in primary care nurse-led telephone triage:Interactional dilemmas and conversational consequences

Telephone triage represents one strategy to manage demand for face-to-face GP appointments in primary care. Although computer decision-support software (CDSS) is increasingly used by nurses to triage patients, little is understood about how interaction is organized in this setting. Specifically any interactional dilemmas this computer-mediated setting invokes; and how these may be consequential for communication with patients. Using conversation analytic methods we undertook a multi-modal analysis of 22 audio-recorded telephone triage nurse-caller interactions from one GP practice in England, including 10 video-recordings of nurses' use of CDSS during triage. We draw on Goffman's theoretical notion of participation frameworks to make sense of these interactions, presenting 'telling cases' of interactional dilemmas nurses faced in meeting patient's needs and accurately documenting the patient's condition within the CDSS. Our findings highlight troubles in the 'interactional workability' of telephone triage exposing difficulties faced in aligning the proximal and wider distal context that structures CDSS-mediated interactions. Patients present with diverse symptoms, understanding of triage consultations, and communication skills which nurses need to negotiate turn-by-turn with CDSS requirements. Nurses therefore need to have sophisticated communication, technological and clinical skills to ensure patients' presenting problems are accurately captured within the CDSS to determine safe triage outcomes. Dilemmas around how nurses manage and record information, and the issues of professional accountability that may ensue, raise questions about the impact of CDSS and its use in supporting nurses to deliver safe and effective patient care

Patients' accounts of memory lapses in interactions between neurologists and patients with functional memory disorders

One of the most commonly made diagnoses in secondary care memory services is functional memory disorder (FMD). FMD is non-progressive and characterised by persistent worries about memory failures without objective evidence of cognitive impairment. This study explores how patients with FMD present their memory concerns. Utilizing video recordings of consultations between patients and neurologists in a memory clinic, we show that FMD patients account for their memory deficits as significant disruptions to their daily lives. Resonating with research which identified a dissonance between self-reports of memory functioning by FMD patients and the outcome of neuropsychological assessments, we demonstrate that, in giving a detailed account of their perceived memory problems, patients provide objective conversational evidence of their cognitive and memory capacity, implicitly undermining the claim of an objective problem. Using conversation analysis, we examine three of the more prominent interactional practices FMD patients draw on when attempting to communicate memory deficits to the doctor - they are (i) contrasts with a standard of 'normal'; (ii) third-party observations; and (iii) direct reported speech. These interactional features are recurrent devices for displaying memory concerns as legitimate problems, embedded within patients' accounts of their day-to-day lives

Hearing Talk: Accomplishing answers and generating facts

Congressional hearing interaction is routinely treated (by members of the culture as well as social scientists) as either a reflection of the personal characteristics of the participants, or a stage on which social forces do battle over the heads of actors. Likewise, answers are treated as the solitary production of witnesses, via an 'interview orthodoxy,' (Button 1978). Yet answers in a hearing are interactionally generated. This analysis reveals two 'questioners' methods' which shape witnesses' answers and also sustain the interview orthodoxy. These methods are explicated, and argued to be partially constitutive of the Congressional hearing as a social setting

The achieved coherence of aphasic narrative

This paper addresses what can be called 'the problem of coherence in aphasic discourse.' Most research on aphasic discourse analytically strips it from the context of its in situ production, and then paradoxically finds language deficits at the sentence level, but intact discourse abilities. This paper argues that conversation analytic methods can solve this problem by analyzing the data without desocializing and detemporalizing it. We then argue that sequences of social action, not individuals, are the locus of conversational competence and coherence

Accomplishing a request without making one: a single-case analysis of a primary care visit

Physicians and other care-givers need to recognize the various and often subtle ways that patients make initiatives, such as requesting medical interventions, in medical encounters. Prior research on patients' requests and physicians' responses has limited real-world relevance because it treats `requesting' and `responding' as straightforward, discretely codable categories. In this study, we use conversation analysis to investigate how a primary care patient delicately hints that an HIV test is warranted and how her physician recognizes (and responds to) her implicit request for this diagnostic test. Our findings provide an empirically grounded and detailed account of some of the subtle interactional dynamics involved in making and responding to medical requests. By documenting the diversity of patients' and physicians' practices, we will gain a more comprehensive understanding of patients' initiatives, physicians' responsiveness, and patient-centered behavior

Toward an interdisciplinary field: Language and social interaction research at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Language and social interaction (LSI) has now come of age as a research strand within Communication. This chapter is about a graduate program in LSI whose home is in a sociology department. We begin with a few notes about this situation, before tracing the evolution of LSI scholarship at the University of California, Santa Barbara

'Role' as an interactional device

This paper reports on an aspect of the social organization of interaction, namely, the use by interactants of the concept 'role.' In contrast with traditional social scientific uses of this concept as an explanatory resource in the analysis of social action, I propose that interactants use this concept to make sense of - as well as accomplish - actions and activities in the social world. Analysis of segments of conversation taken from the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings demonstrate this, as well as the more general point that description is a form of social action

‘‘Occasional’ Drinking: Some uses of a non-standard temporal metric in primary care assessment of alcohol use'

In this article we focused on two fundamentally different ways that patients’ alcohol usage is described or formulated. Generally doctors work to elicit a standardized rate of use metric (e.g., ‘six drinks per week’). But there is a fundamentally different metric that patients can invoke: a non-standard temporal metric of use, such as ‘occasional’ drinking. Invoking this metric is a method whereby patients obviate a physicians’ otherwise standard push to elicit a rate of use. Doctors and patients regularly contrast invocations of ‘occasional’ drinking with regularized, rate of use formulations of drinking, and treat the former as obviating the need to elicit or offer the latter. This analysis of the detailed interactional methods used by patients to claim to be ‘occasional’ consumers of alcohol advances lines of inquiry in several domains, to wit: the morality of cognition; the data collection practices of institutions; and the broad sweep of quantification in history

Conversation Analysis and Ethnomethodology: the Centrality of Interaction

The paper summarizes the theoretical and methodological principles of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, two approaches which focus on the understanding of social action as it is produced by participants themselves. Particularly, the authors discuss the strengths and potentials of the two approaches in highlighting features of the communication between patients and health providers. The attention to the temporal and the collaborative character of talk is discussed as unique to Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and considered as powerful way to understand how participants organize their actions and activities in the consultation. Finally the authors hint to the implications of the conversation analytic study of healthcare interactions for medical practice