Goings-on in a CCU: an ethnomethodological account of things that go on in a routine hand-over.

The transcripts of two hand-overs in a critical care unit are ethnomethodologically examined. Specimens of nurses' practices in accomplishing forms of social order are identified. The hand-overs show how nurses transfer all sorts of taken-for-granted scientific, technological, medical, nursing, psychological and sociological material. Doing routine work in nursing is shown to be accomplished, with relative ease, during the hand-over when what would otherwise be viewed as dramatic features, such as 'professional authority' and 'telling about dying', are routinely managed by these nurses.