The journey to advice: balancing certainty and uncertainty in doctor delivery of expert opinion

The paper deals with the formulation of advice delivered by the doctor in routine gynecological consultations with pregnant patients. We analyze episodes in which the patients solicit advice for a number of concerns related to their health and overall life habits during their pregnancy. We show how the doctor’s formulation of the advice is sequentially elaborated through rounds of inquiry, sequences which account for the reasons to formulate that particular advice, and it changes from its initial delivery to the final formulation. In these rounds, we show that the doctor’s advice may progressively lose certainty and consistency, and that this is sequentially dealt as a strategic resource to adjust to the patient’s expression of resistance and to solicit her to choose the preferred course of action.