Module: Health, Illness and Society

Topic 3


Topic 3: Professions and the Clinical Relationship

Objectives

When you have completed the reading and participated in the taught components for this week, we hope you will be able to:

  • Outline the main approaches to understanding and analysing the role of the medical profession in healthcare
  • Define what discourse analysis is, identify the benefits of discourse analysis and describe how it can be used in health care research

Lecture: Professions, power and trust

Some social scientists regard the medical profession as an institution that serves to ensure that medical practitioners use their knowledge and skills to the greatest social benefit. Others view it as institutions for securing occupational and social authority and dominance. This lecture will examine these different views of the medical profession and the relationship to social power/influence and public trust. It will also consider the ways in which patients have begun to assert themselves in the sphere of medicine (e.g. social movements).

Lecture notes, powerpoint and list of cited references

Virtual seminar: Discourse analysis

In this seminar you will focus on one qualitative research approach, discourse analysis, exploring what it is and how it might be used in research on health and illness.


Click below to discuss:


Preparation for this week<

Read the paper by Shaw and Bailey on discourse analysis, which gives examples of studies that have used discourse analysis to examine e.g. communication in medical consultations and decisions about psychiatric treatment. Search the literature and see what other studies you can find that use discourse analysis to study issues relevant to health and illness. Select one of these studies that you find particularly interesting. Then prepare 200 words to include a description of what discourse analysis is (trying to write this in your own words); a very brief description of the discourse analysis study you have selected and two bullet points on how you think the study has  – or has not – enriched your understanding of health and illness. When you are happy with your draft, cut and paste it into a new thread, with a title relevant to your example (e.g. ‘Discourse analysis of interpreted consultations’or ‘Health professionals views of mental illness’).

Set reading

BOOK CHAPTERS

Light D: Health professions, markets and countervailing powers. In: Handbook of Medical Sociology. 6th edn. Edited by Bird CE, Conrad P, Fremont AM, Timmermans S. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press; 2010: 270-289. (read it here)

 

ACADEMIC PAPERS

Shaw SE, Bailey J: Discourse analysis: what is it and why is it relevant to family practice?  Family Practice 2009, 26:413-419. (read it here)