Complaining about previous treatment in health care settings

In health care encounters, complaining is usually discussed in terms of written and filed customer or patient complaints against negligence or malpractice within the medical institution. Less attention has been paid to complaining as a co-constructed activity that may emerge in various ways, depending on the institutional and structural context in which it occurs. In this paper, we describe ways in which criticism by patients of previous treatment may (or may not) escalate into complaining about other health care providers. The target of the complaint is either the competing form of health care (in homoeopathy) or the institution where the recipient of the negative assessment or reported transgression or negligence works. The central finding is that while in ordinary conversation complaining about an absent party often makes an affiliation from the co-participant relevant and helps to build encounters, actions that have potential to develop into alliances between those complaining against the third party, ill health care complaints may also serve various other institutional tasks. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.