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Introduction
Published in Lisa Jean Moore, Monica J. Casper, The Body, 2014
Lisa Jean Moore, Monica J. Casper
Medical sociology—one of our fields of expertise—is diverse, with a branch of study focused on political economy of health that rarely takes the body into consideration. Sociology of health and illness, attentive to lived experiences of pain, illness, and suffering, tends more toward integrating the body into scholarly analysis. Often in this work, embodiment and materiality (e.g., the physical dimensions of illness), are conceptualized as the terrain on which illness unfolds, or as a context for suffering.
Introduction
Published in Michael Bury, Health and Illness in a Changing Society, 2013
It is one of the contentions of this book that medical sociology relates to health and illness in two different ways. At one level, medical sociology tries to 'make sense of illness', to use Radley's phrase (Radley 1994), by applying its perspectives to the experience and social distribution of health disorders. At this level medical sociology often complements and sometimes challenges other disciplines that are concerned with health. Inevitably, medical sociology research touches on matters which are also of interest to clinical medicine, the bio-medical sciences, nursing, epidemiology and public health, and psychology. It is for this reason that, in practice, medical sociology research is often multidisciplinary in character. Many medical sociologists do not worry unduly about disciplinary labels.
What role does the body have in illness?
Published in Lucy Yardley, Material discourses of health and illness, 2013
One feature of work that has focused upon narrative has been an interest in the form of the stories themselves. Where phenomenological study attempts to read out the individual's experience from the account, researchers focusing upon discourse argue that there is no abiding experience that lies behind the words; rather, the experience of illness is fashioned in the telling. The study of accounts and of discourse is now well established in social psychology (Antaki 1994; Edwards and Potter 1992; Potter and Wetherell 1987). It emphasises that accounts are intentional, are strategically structured and draw upon both the immediate and other contexts to make their points. Examples using a similar approach, though within medical sociology, have existed for some time. In her study of families with handicapped children, Voysey (1975) chose to analyse what the parents said as statements aimed at justifying the hard choices they had had to make. Equally important, their accounts painted a picture of the families as being even more ‘normal’ than most, because of the way they had coped with the difficulties arising from their children's disabilities.
Distinctions and blurred boundaries between qualitative approaches and public and patient involvement (PPI) in research
Published in International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2022
Ruth Mc Menamin, Jytte Isaksen, Molly Manning, Edel Tierney
Qualitative research which “uses words as data, collected and analysed in different ways” (Braun & Clarke, 2013, p. 3) has a long independent tradition in medical sociology, health psychology and anthropological studies of healthcare (Locock & Boaz, 2019). This iterative approach is particularly useful for obtaining rich descriptions and capturing participants’ lived experiences (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). In health services research, qualitative research methods have been valuable. For example, in clinical trials, an in-depth elicitation of participant perspectives can help inform the development and future implementation of interventions. Adopting a qualitative approach in research can also help to evaluate how an intervention is received and why it does or does not work in particular contexts and cultures by drawing on participants’ lived experiences and knowledge.
Not just an information-delivery tool. An ethnographic study exploring Danish GPs’ perspectives on and experiences with the relational potential of email consultation
Published in Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, 2020
Elisabeth Assing Hvidt, Jens Søndergaard, Maja Klausen, Anette Grønning
Jottings from the fieldwork were worked up into detailed descriptive, first-person field notes including informal conversations. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and both interview transcripts and reports with fieldwork notes were analyzed by means of the software program NVivo 12 Pro. The first author coded the transcripts in two phases: an initial open coding and a subsequent closed thematic coding focusing on identified themes and subthemes allowing for expansion and reduction along the way (see Table 2) [23]. By means of the inductive thematic analysis, we aimed to stay as close as possible to the meanings in the data although we are aware that analysis is always shaped by the researchers’ assumptions, professional training, personal and political standpoints, etc. All authors discussed and agreed upon the identified themes (intercoder agreement), relating them to the original transcripts and aligning them where necessary. The authors acknowledge that their position within communication, media and medical sociology might have biased them towards a positive view on human interaction through technology. However, a part-time GP, drawing from experiences from many years of clinical work in a general practice clinic, was part of the author team and theoretical assumptions and ideas were challenged and discussed critically throughout the analytic process.
Teaching sociology to undergraduate medical students
Published in Medical Teacher, 2018
Kathleen Kendall, Tracey Collett, Anya de Iongh, Simon Forrest, Moira Kelly
Medical sociology is the sociological study of health, illness, and medicine. Sociology has a strong track record of contributing toward important health care knowledge, policies, and practices. Growing evidence of the social determinants of health and increasing emphasis on people’s experiences of health, illness, and health care have encouraged professional bodies (Cuff and Vanselow 2004; AAMC 2011), as well as global commissions and agencies (WHO 2006; Frenk et al. 2010) to call for medical education curricula to prepare graduates with the knowledge and skills needed to address them. Sociology plays a critical role in meeting these needs.