John Heritage is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Douglas W. Maynard is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• 1. Introduction: analyzing interaction between doctors and patients in primary care encounters John Heritage and Douglas W. Maynard; 2. Soliciting patients' presenting concerns Jeffrey Robinson; 3. Accounting for the visit: giving reasons for seeking medical care John Heritage and Jeffrey Robinson; 4. Realizing the illness: patients' narratives of symptom discovery Tim Halkowski; 5. Explaining illness: patients' proposals and physicians' responses Virginia Gill and Douglas W. Maynard; 6. Taking the history: questioning during comprehensive history taking Elizabeth Boyd and John Heritage; 7. Body work: the collaborative production of the clinical object Christian Heath; 8. Communicating and responding to diagnosis Anssi Peräkylä; 9. On diagnostic rationality: bad news, good news, and the symptom residue Douglas W. Maynard and Richard M. Frankel; 10. Treatment decisions: negotiations between doctors and patients in acute care encounters Tanya Stivers; 11. Prescriptions and prescribing: co-ordinating talk and text-based activities David Greatbach; 12. Lifestyle discussions in medical interviews Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Liisa Raevaara, Markku Haakana, Tuukka Tammi and Anssi Peräkylä; 13. Co-ordinating closings in medical interviews: producing continuity of care Candace West; 14. Mis-alignments in 'after-hours' calls to a British GP's practice: a study in telephone medicine Paul Drew.