Qualitative Health Research, Ahead of Print.
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.