"You Should Maybe Work Together a Little Bit": Formulating Requests in Interprofessional Interactions.

Based on an empirical analysis of video-recorded collaborative practice situations, this article looks at different ways in which a health professional can direct a request to another professional with the aim that he or she performs an action. Using a corpus of video-recorded interactions in different institutional settings and types of situations, it looks at how requests are formulated, showing that they can range from authoritative to mitigated, direct to indirect, and explicit to implicit. The study shows that professionals use a great deal of strategies to preserve politeness and each other's right not to be told what to do, aiming at mitigating the "face-threatening" aspect of requests. However, by doing so, they frequently produce unclear statements which can impede good communication and professional collaboration.

Swiss family physicians' perceptions and attitudes towards knowledge translation practices.

BACKGROUND: Several studies have been performed to understand the way family physicians apply knowledge from medical research in practice. However, very little is known concerning family physicians in Switzerland. In an environment in which information constantly accumulates, it is crucial to identify the major sources of scientific information that are used by family physicians to keep their medical knowledge up to date and barriers to use these sources. Our main objective was to examine medical knowledge translation (KT) practices of Swiss family physicians. METHODS: The population consisted of French- and German-speaking private practice physicians specialised in family medicine. We conducted four interviews and three focus groups (n = 25). The interview guides of the semi-structured interviews and focus groups focused on (a) ways and means used by physicians to keep updated with information relevant to clinical practice; (b) how they consider their role in translating knowledge into practice; (c) potential barriers to KT; (d) solutions proposed by physicians for effective KT. RESULTS: Family physicians find themselves rather ambivalent about the translation of knowledge based on scientific literature, but generally express much interest in KT. They often feel overwhelmed by "information floods" and perceive clinical practice guidelines and other supports to be of limited usefulness for their practice. They often combine various formal and informal information sources to keep their knowledge up to date. Swiss family physicians report considering themselves as artisans, caring for patients with complex needs. CONCLUSION: Improved performance of KT initiatives in family medicine should be tailored to actual needs and based on high quality evidence-based sources.