Doing “Care Work” in Emergency Service Calls

Sending help when needed is a central role for emergency service call takers, but providing help during the call is also an important part of the job. The “care work” call takers do may assist callers with physical and emotional safety and enhance their resilience as they deal with ongoing emergencies prior to the arrival of the police. This conversational analytic study of a collection of 24 emergency telephone calls reveals the interactional techniques the call takers use to accomplish care work and shows how they integrate care work into their communication within the call.