‘You don’t think? But you can check’: Do emergency callers really express uncertainty when they say ‘I (don’t) think’?

This paper focuses on the epistemic phrase ‘ I (don’t) think ’ when used by lay persons describing a medical emergency to call-takers triaging ambulance dispatch. Using conversation analysis, we analysed a collection of 100 cases of callers saying ‘ I think ’ or ‘ I don’t think ’ in emergency calls for cardiac arrest in Australia. Callers do not typically express uncertainty when they say ‘ I (don’t) think ’, but rather, use ‘ I (don’t) think ’ as an epistemic stance marker introducing their own perspective and indexing low epistemic status. However, call-takers often orient to ‘ I (don’t) think ’ as signalling uncertainty (about accuracy of patient assessment) and subsequently request verification. These requests can create unnecessary delays, as we show that callers who said ‘ I (don’t) think ’ rarely changed their initial assessment. We describe how these findings can be translated into practical recommendations for call-taker training, so as to improve emergency medical dispatch for time-critical situations.