Ambiguous discursive practices in health-care project plans: a keyword-assisted critical discourse analysis of the term “patient”

Purpose–The purpose of the paper is to investigate ambiguous language use in health-care project plans in amanner that accounts for the wider, institutional, public health-care context.Design/methodology/approach–The article deployed a case study approach and drew from Fairclough’scritical discourse analysis (CDA) as well as a keyword analysis to investigate two time-sequenced versions ofthe same project planning document for a health-care project in Finland.Findings–In the project plans investigated, the study identifiedpatientas a keyword possessing variousmeanings within the public health-care context. By examining the discursive practices around the keywordpatient, the study demonstrated their role in constituting the institutional context as well as the function of thiscontext in constraining these practices.Originality/value–By looking at the potential of the CDA to investigate discursive practices of the keywordin two sequential versions of a project plan within the broader context of public health care, the study adds tothe scant existing literature on critically oriented health-care project communication studies.