The Hospital Consultation I: The Pre-test Risk of Genetic Abnormalities

Abstract

The next two chapters will explore issues arising from the hospital consultation, drawing on qualitative analysis of transcripts of 16 hospital consultations, carried out by six consultants and three registrars working at the hospital site for our research. This analysis will be supported, where possible, by quotations from post-consultation interviews undertaken with ten of these pregnant women. (The other six did not consent to a follow-up interview, or could not be contacted.) The combination of direct observation of consultation content with access to women’s interpretations of what they had been told through the post-consultation interviews provided a powerful methodology for understanding the communication of genetic information in the hospital consultation.