Investigating the subjective experience of first caregiver – patient encounters

Abstract

From nurses to dentists and doctors, caregivers undergo significant initial and life-long training. Leaving aside the case of psychotherapy, this training rarely addresses, however, the subjective side of practice, especially the lived experience of caregiving. What do practitioners and patients do, think, or feel, and how do barely perceptible actions or perceptions impact on the therapeutic relationship and outcome (Barber et al., 2000)? Answering these questions can help build fruitful relationships with patients and be a source of formative self-knowledge. We investigate the lived experience of caregivers during their first meeting with a patient. We rely on micro-phenomenological interviews which offer fine-grained, first-person descriptions of someone’s holistic experience in a given situation, beyond generalizations about know-how or habits (Petitmengin et al., 2019; Valenzuela-Moguillansky & Vásquez-Rosati, 2019). We show how the subjective experience of meeting a new patient can be structured with i) categories of microexperiential acts (gathering information, assessing and performing actions), ii) the scopes of these acts, which involve outer but also inner perceptions, various elaborations, regulations and interventions and iii) a range of experiential modalities. We focus on how language is used for more than exchanging information, with attention paid to various facets of a patient’s linguistic activity and a range of illocutionary acts (Austin, 1962) to adjust one’s behavior or offer support. We also highlight the richness of caregivers’ lived experience and what they share across professions and practices, promoting an encompassing ‘phenomenology of care’ which we argue should find its place in educational approaches in health.