Counterpublic health and the design of drug services for methamphetamine consumers in Melbourne
This article is interested in how notions of the ‘public’ are conceived, marshalled and enacted in drug-treatment responses to methamphetamine use in Melbourne, Australia. After reviewing qualitative data collected among health-care providers and methamphetamine consumers, we draw on the work of Michael Warner to argue that services for methamphetamine consumers in Melbourne betray ongoing tensions between ‘public’ and ‘counterpublic’ constituencies. Our analysis indicates that these tensions manifest in two ways: in the management of ‘street business’ in the delivery of serv...
Source: Health: - December 18, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Duff, C., Moore, D. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Performing 'pragmatic holism': Professionalisation and the holistic discourse of non-medically qualified acupuncturists and homeopaths in the United Kingdom
This article explores the strategies by which two groups of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners, namely, non-medically qualified acupuncturists and homeopaths in the United Kingdom, pragmatically accommodate holistic notions as a professional resource, a process of negotiation between maintaining their holistic premise, on the one hand, and the drive to professionalise and enhance their societal status, on the other. Based on in-depth interviews with non-medically qualified acupuncture and homeopathy practitioners and school principals, textual analysis of practitioners’ web sites and observation of ...
Source: Health: - December 18, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Givati, A. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The social negotiation of fitness for work: Tensions in doctor-patient relationships over medical certification of chronic pain
The UK government is promoting the health benefits of work, in order to change doctors’ and patients’ behaviour and reduce sickness absence. The rationale is that many people ‘off sick’ would have better outcomes by staying at work; but reducing the costs of health care and benefits is also an imperative. Replacement of the ‘sick note’ with the ‘fit note’ and a national educational programme are intended to reduce sickness-certification rates, but how will these initiatives impact on doctor–patient relationships and the existing tension between the doctor as patient adv...
Source: Health: - December 18, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Wainwright, E., Wainwright, D., Keogh, E., Eccleston, C. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The development of the specialism of emergency medicine: Media and cultural influences
In this article we analyse, via a critical review of the literature, the development of a relatively new medical specialism in the United Kingdom, that of emergency medicine. Despite the high media profile of emergency care, it is a low-status specialism within UK medicine. The creation of a specialist College in 2008 means that, symbolically, recognition as a full specialism has now been achieved. In this article, we will show, using a sociology of professions approach, how emergency medicine defined itself as a specialism, and sought to carve out a distinctive jurisdiction. While, in the context of the UK National Health...
Source: Health: - December 18, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Timmons, S., Nairn, S. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Timescapes of obesity: Coming to terms with a complex socio-medical phenomenon
In conclusion, we suggest time-sensitive approaches for the analysis of health phenomena and the development of corresponding policy measures. (Source: Health:)
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Felt, U., Felder, K., Ohler, T., Penkler, M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Parent-led conferences as sites of medical work
Conferences are novel sites for understanding medical work. Through describing styles of presentation that take place at conferences attended by patients and parents, this article highlights how clinicians on stage present ordinary and extraordinary aspects of medicine. Attention is drawn to the reaction of the parents in the audience. The power of the presenter to direct proceedings highlights the potential vulnerability of the audience. The relationship between clinician on stage and parents in the audience reflects the clinical relationship between doctor and patient. But through identifying insiders and outsiders, the ...
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Dimond, R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The experiences of close persons caring for people with chronic kidney disease stage 5 on conservative kidney management: Contested discourses of ageing
In this study, we conducted qualitative interviews with 26 close persons caring for someone with chronic kidney disease stage 5 in the United Kingdom to investigate how conservative kidney management interacted with implicit ideas of ageing, in both the experience of conservative kidney management and the understanding of the prognosis and future care of the kidney disease. Our findings highlighted participant confusion about the nature of conservative kidney management, which stems from an initial lack of clarity about how conservative kidney management differed from conventional treatments for chronic kidney disease stag...
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Low, J., Myers, J., Smith, G., Higgs, P., Burns, A., Hopkins, K., Jones, L. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Medical professionalism on television: Student perceptions and pedagogical implications
Previous research has pointed to the role television can play in informing health practices and beliefs. Within the academic setting in particular, some educators have raised concerns about the influence of medical dramas on students. Less research, however, draws on the perspectives of students, and this study therefore explores medical students’ perceptions of medical practice and professionalism in popular medical television programmes. Qualitative data from surveys of Australian undergraduate medical students showed that students perceived professionalism in dichotomous ways, with three main themes: cure–ca...
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Weaver, R., Wilson, I., Langendyk, V. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
International medical migration: A critical conceptual review of the global movements of doctors and nurses
This paper critically appraises the discourse around international medical migration at the turn of the 21st century. A critical narrative review of a range of English-language sources, including grey literature, books and research reports, traces the development and spread of specific causative models. The attribution of causative relations between the movement of skilled medical workers, the provision of health care and population health outcomes illustrates how the global reach of biomedicine has to be understood in the context of local conditions. The need to understand migration as an aspect of uneven global developme...
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Bradby, H. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Local status and power in area-based health improvement partnerships
This article addresses both of these gaps by exploring partnerships as a social and developmental process, drawing on concepts from figurational sociology to explain how provider relations develop within an area-based initiative. Qualitative methods were used to explore, prospectively, the development of an area-based initiative targeted at a town in the north west of England. A central finding was that although effective delivery of area-based initiatives is premised on a high level of co-ordination between service providers, the pattern of interdependencies between providers limits the frequency and effectiveness of co-o...
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Powell, K., Thurston, M., Bloyce, D. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The context of empowerment and self-care within the field of diabetes
This article uses Bourdieu’s concept of field, as a bounded social space in which actors conduct their lives day-to-day, to explore the context within which issues of empowerment are addressed and negotiated. The practice of empowerment within the biologically defined and biomedically ‘policed’ field of diabetes is explored using empirical data from a study of diabetes health-care professionals’ understanding and practices around empowerment. It is concluded that rather than promoting active self-management and empowerment, the nature of the field of diabetes, and in particular its privileging of th...
Source: Health: - October 16, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Scambler, S., Newton, P., Asimakopoulou, K. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Clothing norms as markers of status in a hospital setting: A Bourdieusian analysis
This article uses a Bourdieusian framework to understand the importance of clothing norms for symbolizing and reproducing social, as well as professional, hierarchy in hospitals. Using data from participant observation, it examines how a complex yet informal dress code has emerged at a community hospital in the Northeastern United States, in a setting where very few formal guidelines exist on how to dress. By conceptualizing professionals as holders of various types of capital (economic, cultural, and symbolic), this article expands previous research which considered clothing only as a marker of professional identity. The ...
Source: Health: - July 31, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Jenkins, T. M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Impairment effects, disability and dry mouth: Exploring the public and private dimensions
This study indicates that identity and self became entangled with impairment effects and a form of disablism. The authors argue that impairment effects are, at times, a useful concept, but in some instances may actually overcomplicate things. By analysing the public and private dimensions of a chronic condition such as dry mouth, we have been enabled to explore the boundary between public and private lives. As a consequence, using public and private accounts may assist us to better locate the point where impairment ends and disability begins. (Source: Health:)
Source: Health: - July 31, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Owens, J., Gibson, B. J., Periyakaruppiah, K., Baker, S. R., Robinson, P. G. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Biography, pandemic time and risk: Pregnant women reflecting on their experiences of the 2009 influenza pandemic
During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, it was identified that women in the third trimester of pregnancy were particularly at risk of serious respiratory distress. At-risk women were advised to seek vaccination, avoid contact with anyone unwell, maintain hygiene routines and stop smoking. We examine this situation of emergent and intense risk produced at the intersection of individual biography and the historical event of a public health emergency. We examine how pregnant women took account of risk, how they negotiated incomplete and at times contradictory advice and shaped courses of action that assisted them to manage the emergin...
Source: Health: - July 31, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Lohm, D., Flowers, P., Stephenson, N., Waller, E., Davis, M. D. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Experiential knowledge of disability, impairment and illness: The reproductive decisions of families genetically at risk
As the capacities of Reproductive Genetic Technologies expand, would-be parents face an increasing number of reproductive decisions regarding testing and screening for different conditions. Several studies have acknowledged the role that ‘experiential knowledge of disability’ plays in arriving at decisions around the use of these technologies; however, there is a lack of clarity within this literature as to what constitutes ‘experiential knowledge of disability’ and an over-reliance on medical diagnoses as a shorthand to describe different types of experience. Drawing on both social model of disabil...
Source: Health: - July 31, 2014 Category: Global & Universal Authors: Boardman, F. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
