‘I'll put up with things for a long time before I need to call anybody’: Face work, the Total Institution and the perpetuation of care inequalities

Failures in fundamental care (e.g. nutrition or pain‐relief) for hospitalised patients can have serious consequences, including avoidable deaths. Policy rhetoric of ‘shared decision‐making’ fails to consider how structural constraints and power dynamics limit patient agency in nursing staff‐patient interactions. Goffman's concepts of face work, the presentation of self and the Total Institution shaped our analysis of interview and focus group data from hospital patients. Patients avoided threatening ‘good’ patient and staff face by only requesting missed care when staff face was convincing as ‘caring’ and ‘available’ (‘engaged’). Patients did not request care from ‘distracted’ staff (‘caring’ but not ‘available’), whilst patient requests were ignored in Total Institution‐like ‘dismissive’ interactions. This meant patients experienced missed care with both ‘distracted’ and ‘dismissive’ staff. Patients with higher support needs were less able to carry out their own missed care to protect staff face, so experienced more serious care omissions. These findings show that many elements of the Total Institution survive in modern healthcare settings despite attempts to support individualised care. Unless nursing staff can maintain face as ‘engaged’ (despite organisational constraints that can reduce their capacity to do so) patient participation in care decisions will remain at the level of rhetoric.