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There is growing interest in standardizing data about social determinants of health (SDOH) in electronic health records (EHRs), yet little is known about how clinicians document SDOH in daily practice. This study investigates clinicians' strategies for working with SDOH data and the challenges confronting SDOH standardization. Drawing on ethnographic observation, interviews with patients and clinicians, and systematic review of patient EHRs—all at an urban teaching hospital in the US Midwest—we analyze three strategies clinicians deploy to integrate SDOH data into patient care. First, clinicians document SDOH using "signal phrases," keywords and short sentences that help them recall patients' social stories. Second, clinicians use other technology or face-to-face conversations to share about patients' SDOH with colleagues. Third, clinicians fold discussion of SDOH with patients into their personal relationships. While these local strategies facilitate personalized care and help clinicians minimize their computer workload, we also consider their limitations for efforts to coordinate care across institutions and attempts to identify SDOH in EHRs. These findings reveal ongoing tensions in projects of standardization in medicine, as well as the specific difficulty of standardizing data about SDOH. They have important clinical implications as they help explain how clinicians may attend to patients' SDOH in ways that are not legible in patient records. This paper is also relevant for policy at a time when mandates to include SDOH data in health records are expanding and strategies to standardize SDOH documentation are being developed. • SDOH are difficult to standardize because of their complexity and ambiguity. • Clinicians attend to patient SDOH in ways that are not legible in patient records. • Ethnographic fieldwork reveals local standards for documenting SDOH in EHRs. • Clinicians use shortcuts and workarounds to share social determinants of health. • Local standards suggest possibilities and limitations of data standardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrepancies exist between how some Black populations perceive depression and how depression is conceptualized within research and clinical settings. Based on a 12-month ethnography of mental health in a predominantly Black disadvantaged urban neighborhood in Midwestern United States, the current study identifies meanings and common ways of expressing depression among African Americans. Depression was often considered a sign of weakness rather than a health problem that might need medical attention. Associated emotions like sadness and hopelessness were inconsistent with notions of strength. Common indicators of depression included classic symptoms such as hopelessness, loss of sleep, and feeling worthless. However, expressions of depression such as anger, agitation, violent behavior, and a frantic search for social interaction that are inconsistent with DSM-V criteria were also common. These findings have implications for the clinical assessment of depression and for the measurement of depression in community surveys. In addition, the context and meaning of symptoms play an important role in determining whether experiences are indicative of depression. This paper underscores that the provision of patient-centered mental health care requires a better understanding of the conceptualization of disorders within specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reports a discourse analysis of the language doctors used as they talked about and engaged in patient handoffs between the emergency department (ED) and various inpatient services at one highly specialized academic tertiary teaching and referral hospital in the Midwest United States. Although interest in handoff improvement has grown considerably in recent years, progress has been hampered, perhaps in part, because of a widely used but limiting conceptual model of handoff as an information transmission. The purpose of the study reported here is to analyze the way doctors make sense of handoff interactions, including uncovering the interpretive frames they use, in order to provide empirical findings to expand conceptual models of handoff. All data reported were drawn from a two-year ethnographic study (2009–2011) and include semi-structured interviews (n = 48), non-participant observations (349 h), and recorded telephone handoff conversations (n = 48). A total of eighty-six individuals participated, including resident and attending doctors from the ED, internal medicine and surgical services, as well as hospital administrators. Findings are organized around four metaphors doctors used: sales, sports and games, packaging, and teamwork. Each metaphor, in turn, reveals an underlying interpretive frame that appears to be influenced by organizational and social structures and to shape the possibilities for action that doctors perceive. The four underlying interpretive frames are: handoff as persuasion, handoff as competition, handoff as expectation matching, and handoff as collaboration. Taken together, these interpretive frames highlight the complex, socially interactive nature of handoff and provide an empirical basis for grounding and enriching the conceptual model of handoff that guides research and practice improvement efforts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research on labeling mental illness has focused relatively little attention on practical organizational concerns in the process of labeling in community mental health services. This paper examines this issue through an ethnographic study of two multi-service community mental health services organizations for people labeled severely and persistently mentally ill in the Midwest United States. The findings show that the labeling process is structured by cultural and policy environments in which mental health services are able to provide resources otherwise difficult to obtain. Within organizations, official labels can be applied for reasons other than clinical practice; they channel resources to both organizations and clients. Informal organizational labels regarding client mental illness are not tethered to the bureaucratic apparatus granting access to and paying for services. Instead, they reflect workers'' real assessments of clients, which can differ from official ones. These informal labels determine how organizations deal with clients when rules and routines are violated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]