Prognostic Differences and Their Origins: a Topography of Experience and Expectation in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

This article is devoted to the phenomenon of prognostic difference on a neonatal intensive care unit (nicu) and it argues that circumstantial elements, the nicu’s local history, and individual knowledge and experience of those involved must be taken into account. By capitalizing on prognostic markers as an analytical category, it becomes possible to study the difference between professionals and parents and how they use similar reasoning to reach substantively different conclusions. Potentially relevant factors in the construction of prognoses are the role of other children, medical technology and the use of the nicu space in the production of prognostic knowledge. My argument underscores that only a multi-layered analysis of these processes accounts for actors’ divergent prognoses.