Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
is expected, and quickly moves on to show the baby on the screen. This might
also be interpreted as two ways to neutralize the initially deviant measurement.
The general pattern also when confronted with a potential deviance is that this
assessment is carried out within the professional perspective, and that the issue
of normality is not raised for discussion by the midwife.
In this study, the ultrasound examination has been analysed as an encounter
between a professional and an everyday perspective. The way the midwife
constantly moves between her own professional and the parents' everyday
perspective is striking. Of particular interest is the way she comments on the
image on the screen and the way she is 'taking the perspective of the other'.
By translating her professional interpretation of the ultrasound image into
the parents' everyday perspective she helps the parents to organize how and
what they see. At the same time, by taking the perspective of the parents, the
midwife can see something else in the image than for instance the anatomical
structure of the baby that belongs to the professional perspective. One could
say that the parents help the midwife to see the image of a baby that within a
fairly short period of time will become a member of a family, a family that in
the ultrasound examination literally tries to catch a sight of its new member.
The meaning of the image is not given - not least because of the qualities
of the image on the screen - but has to be actively created by, among other
things, organizing and interpreting the image. Through this process, the
interpretation and understanding of the image that appears on the screen is
negotiated.
These negotiations and interpretations of the image of the expected baby
also point to an interesting condition for our vision, opened up by the health
technology. Due to her professional capacity to interpret the image, the
midwife directs the attention of the parents towards the aspects of the image
that are being explained during the ultrasound examination. The parents
are in this sense, as Duden (1993) has argued, 'shown' what they should
see in the medical image, by the midwife, the expert. The midwife chooses
what should be shown, and what should be explained, for example to show
a normally developed heart with a clearly discernible four-chamber picture
or a waving hand. In the clinical situation there is consequently a tension
between the ultrasound image as a diagnostic tool and the ultrasound image
as an image of the expected baby.
What is also indicated is that through the ultrasound image that the parents
are confronted with in the clinical context, they are in various ways forced
into refl exivity (Giddens 1991). First of all, the development of the ultrasound
technology makes routine ultrasound scans an increasingly elaborated
control of the expected baby's normality. Second, these conditions shape the
whole clinical situation. The examination is 'shown' on the screen through
the whole encounter, and is therefore in a sense 'forced' on the parents.
This process of visualization can evoke further parental questions about the
development, well-being, and normality of the baby they actually see, as well
as about the midwife's professional assessments and judgements.
