Diversiteit en complexiteit van kennis in zorginteracties

The empirical papers in this special issue show that how knowledge is made relevant and negotiated in interaction is a complex matter. Traditionally, research on knowledge conceptualizes knowledge as being distributed across patients and health care providers, who respectively have access to experiential knowledge and medical knowledge of illness. In this view, both forms of knowledge then need to be transferred from one party to the other. However, our contributions show that interactions are more complex in many ways. First of all, there are more actors involved in medical interaction, such as translators and family members, who each uniquely contribute to what knowledge is constructed and how. Secondly, the forms and domains of knowledge cannot be reduced to medical and experiential knowledge, but for instance also concern knowledge on how health care interactions are structured. Thirdly, knowledge is not only about informing the other party in interaction but is for instance also used to account for decisions or to seek alignment. In this contribution we explore how these insights can inform future research and how it can help deepen our understanding of patient centredness and shared decision making in health care communication.