Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the work involved in replacing a dominant description with an alternative. Drawing on the Morecambe Bay Investigation, this paper traces how descriptions weaken or gather force as they travel through different forums and processes, and are presented to different audiences.

Paper long abstract:

In 2008, 5 'serious untoward events' occurred on the maternity unit of Furness General Hospital. The prevailing view, held by clinical staff, hospital managers and executives, was that these events were unconnected and did not signal failures in care. The events were subject to a number of investigations but were never examined together until the Morecambe Bay Investigation was commissioned in 2015. The consensus, that these events were unconnected, was maintained by the testimony of staff and governance procedures conducted by managers and executives. This articulation of events prevented the incidents from being considered together until the Morecambe Bay Investigation. Drawing on the report of this investigation, this paper examines how the prevailing view was dismantled and replaced with a very different description. It explores the work required parents affected by the events to become activists, engaging with governing bodies and legal processes, challenging the descriptions given by clinicians, lobbying for inquests, mobilisation of social media, and preparedness to engage with the national press. This paper engages with longstanding STS concerns about knowledge and performance. It examines knowledge claims - their positionality, weighting, authority and mobility - as description is used to replace an established description. But the success of a description is distributed more widely than the description and describer. This paper traces how descriptions weaken or gather force as they travel through different forums and processes, and are presented to different audiences - all pivotal to whether a particular description may hold as a reliable account of events.