ABSTRACT
Particular awareness context should be distinguished from two others involving suspicion, neither of which analyze but which require mention. The structural conditions that ordinarily maintain closed awareness may change during the patient's hospitalization, and so change the context to one of suspicion. The patient's actual resources are exceedingly slim. Contrast his situation with two "suspicion" situations that commonly occur outside hospitals. The important consequences of the suspicion awareness context are easy to imagine. The contrast with closed awareness interaction is immediately apparent, for then there is little contest in maintaining the awareness context. The two awareness contexts into which open suspicion are most frequently transformed are open awareness and "mutual pretense awareness. The way that staff members handle the patient's suspicions, whether they confirm or deny them, affects whether the patient will choose later to play a mutual pretense game or speak openly of his coming death.
