Search

This paper examines the grid of sentiment that structures medical travel to India. In contrast to studies that render emotion as ancillary, the paper argues that affect is fundamental to medical travel's ability to ease the linked somatic, emotional, financial, and political injuries of being ill 'back home'. The ethnographic approach follows the scenes of medical travel within the Indian corporate hospital room, based on observations and interviews among foreign patients, caregivers, and hospital staff in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore. Foreign patients conveyed diverse sentiments about their journey to India ranging from betrayal to gratitude, and their expressions of risk, healthcare costs, and cultural difference help sustain India's popularity as a medical travel destination. However, although the affective dimensions of medical travel promise a remedy for foreign patients, they also reveal the fault lines of market medicine in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientific attention has recently focused upon the private regulation of Britain's burgeoning night-time economy by door supervisors or ‘bouncers’ as they are more commonly known. Contributing ethnography to this literature, this paper explores bodily risk among doorstaff in Southwest Britain. The commonly perceived association between doorwork and high levels of violence renders this a demonised occupation yet doorstaff may also be in physical danger when policing urban nightspots. Centrally, this participant observational study—grounded in the phenomenological ‘foreground’ or lived experience of risk — explores bodily danger within the door supervisors' routine night-time contexts. Interrelated social, cultural and economic factors associated with the attenuation, minimisation or avoidance of physical harm are also noted. Describing voluntary and other-imposed occupational health risks, including physical violence and illicit drug-taking, furthers an appreciative understanding of why doorstaff may simultaneously be in danger and dangerous. More formally, this paper, in underscoring the importance of the ‘lived body’, also supports recent theoretical calls for an embodied sociology. Sociological reflection on health, risk and society, it will be argued, must be grounded in the inescapable corporeality and emotional vicissitudes of actual flesh and blood bodies less it ride roughshod over complex social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, undergraduate medical education in the United Kingdom has undergone several important changes. Many of these have revolved around a paradigmatic shift from ‘paternalistic’ to ‘patient-centred’ approaches to healthcare. Adopting a Foucauldian understanding of power and borrowing from Freire’s critical pedagogy, in this paper I draw upon ethnographic data from one UK medical school to illustrate the recurrence among medical students of narrow and uncritical understandings of patient-centred practices. These understandings highlight a tension between the ideals and frameworks of medical education policy and students’ conceptualisations of professional learning and practice. I explore this tension by tracing some possible links between students’ views of patient-centredness and the teaching practices at the medical school. I argue that more critical approaches to medical learning are sorely needed and suggest some directions for medical education that would help support the personal and professional development of more critically aware practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective:The Any Qualified Provider framework in the National Health Service has changed the way adult audiology services are offered in England. Under the new rules, patients are being offered a choice in geographical location and audiology provider. This study aimed to explore how choices in treatment are presented and to identify what information patients need when they are seeking help with hearing loss.Design:This study adopted qualitative methods of ethnographic observations and focus group interviews to identify information needed prior to, and during, help-seeking. Observational data and focus group data were analysed using the constant comparison method of grounded theory.Study sample:Participants were recruited from a community Health and Social Care Trust in the west of England. This service incorporates both an Audiology and a Hearing Therapy service. Twenty seven participants were involved in focus groups or interviews.Results:Participants receive little information beyond the detail of hearing aids. Participants report little information that was not directly related to uptake of hearing aids.Conclusions:Participant preferences were not explored and limited information resulted in decisions that were clinician-led. The gaps in information reflect previous data on clinician communication and highlight the need for consistent information on a range of interventions to manage hearing loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]