The call became the subject of a paper, "When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis" (1988) [1], which contains the complete transcript.
The conversation is fascinating and frustrating to read. The paper breaks down the interactions to try to find out where exactly communication failed.
> Our investigation revealed that the participants had rather different understandings of what was happening and different expectations of what was supposed to happen in this conversation. Over the course of the interaction the talk of both caller and nurse-dispatcher (and her supervisor) operated to extend and deepen this misalignment. This misalignment contributed in a fundamental way to a dispute that contaminated and transformed the participants' activity: the eliciting and giving of information concerning the condition of the caller's stepmother was displaced by the activity of arguing. We were thus able to show when and how words can "fail," not in the sense of failing to be heard or comprehended but in the sense of failing to achieve the "meaning" they might be perceived as semantically conveying.
The paper is paywalled, but can be accessed with Sci-Hub [2].
Thanks for posting it! I was initially infuriated at the nurse's response -- thinking "these are emergency professionals, how can they not know how to deal with people in distress?" -- but after reading the paper, I see the interaction was more nuanced. Like the article argues, it was a non-standard interaction, with bits of information offered in places where they aren't usually expected (even in informal conversations!), and both the nurse and the caller had built different mental models of what was going on, leading to disaster.
The conversation is fascinating and frustrating to read. The paper breaks down the interactions to try to find out where exactly communication failed.
> Our investigation revealed that the participants had rather different understandings of what was happening and different expectations of what was supposed to happen in this conversation. Over the course of the interaction the talk of both caller and nurse-dispatcher (and her supervisor) operated to extend and deepen this misalignment. This misalignment contributed in a fundamental way to a dispute that contaminated and transformed the participants' activity: the eliciting and giving of information concerning the condition of the caller's stepmother was displaced by the activity of arguing. We were thus able to show when and how words can "fail," not in the sense of failing to be heard or comprehended but in the sense of failing to achieve the "meaning" they might be perceived as semantically conveying.
The paper is paywalled, but can be accessed with Sci-Hub [2].
[1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/800591
[2] https://sci-hub.tw/https%3A//www.jstor.org/stable/800591%3Fs...