At the Front Stage: Uncertainty as a Medical Work Object

Abstract

In this article, we offer a novel exploration of how medical professionals other than physicians approach uncertainty in their training and work practices by using the concept of “work object.” Drawing on 65 in-depth interviews with genetic counselors and related health professionals, we illustrate how reconceiving medical uncertainty as a work object opens up and contributes to analytic perspectives that challenge classical assumptions that uncertainty is antithetical to biomedical expertise and instead can be a source of expert authority. In particular, rather than strategizing to minimize or resolve uncertainty and positioning it as exceptional and transitory, we find that the genetic counseling profession foregrounds it as central and ongoing to the profession’s work and expertise. Overall, in positioning uncertainty at the front stage of their work, we show how the genetic counseling profession bolsters its expert status by normalizing and routinizing uncertainty as a central and permanent work object.