1 Diagnostic Work in Poisons Advising – “Is there anything I need to worry about?” Roger S. Slack (1), Rob Procter (2), Mark Hartswood (3), Alexander Voss (2), Mark Rouncefield (4). (1) School of Social Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor: r.slack@bangor.ac.uk; (2) ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science, University of Manchester, Manchester; (3) Social Informatics, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh; (4) InfoLab21, University of Lancaster, Lancaster. Introduction ‘“Calls” are best described as ongoing and developing sequences of action, actions that get formed up into organizational events’ ([12] p.188) This paper seeks to answer the question ‘How is information oriented to by healthcare professionals?’ By ‘healthcare professionals’ we mean both advisors and those seeking advice. We want to argue that advising and being advised are thoroughgoingly social in character and that what we see is not simply the reading of information to a healthcare professional who thereby understands what must be done. We want to focus on the notion of ‘doing advising’ – we use the word ‘doing’ as we attend to the situated practices of advising in terms of the uses of information by advisers and in terms of speech exchanges between advisers and callers. Attending to ‘doing advising’ highlights advice as a practical members’ achievement, an artful accomplishment co-operatively undertaken in real time. Poisons Advising in the UK Unlike, for example, in North America or Sweden (cf [2,5]), advice on the management of accidental or deliberate ingestion of toxic substances or overdoses of substances is not given to members of the public: in the UK such inquiries are managed through healthcare professionals. For example, a patient may present at their general practitioner’s office or the local hospital emergency room; parents, relatives, carers and so forth may telephone NHSDirect/24 to inquire about substance ingestion: in all these cases, advice on management will be given either to or through a healthcare professional. Information Officers (IOs) have an array of persons and artefacts that can be drawn on in giving advice: we show how these are employed in vivo to do advising. Poisons advice for healthcare professionals in the UK is delivered in the following ways: TOXBASE: a web-based database of poisons data that contains information on substances, their toxicity and management strategies for healthcare professionals treating patients A network of poisons information centres: located throughout the UK to which phone calls can be made if further information is required or if information cannot be found on TOXBASE We focus here on the work of IOs in the Scottish Poisons Information Bureau (SPIB).