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Medical Authority (medical + authority)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience by Katrina Karkazis

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010
Lynn Morgan
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

The trouble with drink: why ideas matter

ADDICTION, Issue 5 2010
Griffith Edwards
ABSTRACT This paper builds upon the work of previous authors who have explored the evolution of ideas in the alcohol arena. With revisions in the relevant sections of ICD and DSM forthcoming, such matters are of considerable contemporary importance. The focus here will be upon the history of the last 200 years. The main themes to be explored include the flux of ideas on what, over time, has counted as the trouble with drink, ideas on the cause of the problem and the impact of this thinking on public action. Medical authorities of the late Enlightenment period made the revolutionary suggestion that habitual drunkenness constituted a disease, rather than a vice. The thread of that idea can be traced to the present day, but with an alternative perception of drink itself or alcohol-related problems generally, as cause for concern, also having a lineage. There are several inferences to be drawn from this history: the need for vigilance lest disease formulations become stalking-horses for moralism and social control, the need to integrate awareness of alcohol dependence as a dimensional individual-level problem, with a public health understanding of the vastly amorphous and at least equally important universe of alcohol-related problems; the dangers lurking in scientific reductionism when the problems at issue truly require a multi-disciplinary analysis; and the need for global consensus rather than cultural imposition of ideas on what counts as the problem with drink. [source]

The Inuulitsivik Maternities: culturally appropriate midwifery and epistemological accommodation

NURSING INQUIRY, Issue 2 2010
Vasiliki K Douglas
DOUGLAS VK. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 111,117 The Inuulitsivik Maternities: culturally appropriate midwifery and epistemological accommodation This is a literature-based historical analysis that uses Michel Foucault's technique of tracing epistemological change over time to understand the epistemological changes and their outcomes that have occurred in Nunavik, the Inuit region of Northern Quebec, with the introduction of modern techniques and technology of childbirth in the period after the Second World War. Beginning in 1986, in the village of Puvurnituq, a series of community birthing centres known as the Inuulitsivik Maternities have been created. They incorporate biomedical techniques and technology, but are incorporated into the Inuit epistemology of health, in which the community is the final arbitrator of medical authority. This epistemological accommodation between modern biomedicine and the distinctly premodern Inuit epistemology of health has led to the creation of a new and profoundly non-modern approach to childbirth in Nunavik. [source]

,A little bitty spot and I'm a big man': patients' perspectives on refusing diagnosis or treatment for lung cancer

PSYCHO-ONCOLOGY, Issue 8 2005
Barbara F. Sharf
Abstract Patient refusal of physicians' recommendations may partially account for variations in lung cancer treatment affecting survival. Reasons for refusal have not been well researched, and patients who refuse are often labeled derogatorily as irrational or enigmatically non-compliant. This study explored why patients refused recommendations for further diagnosis or treatment of lung cancer. We conducted in-depth interviews with nine patients, identified and recruited over a 2-year period, with documented refusal of doctors' recommendations. Recruiting was hampered by deaths, logistics, and refusal to participate. Questions focused on participants' understanding of disease, medical recommendations, and perceptions of decision-making. Transcripts were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Participants emphasized self-efficacy, minimizing threat, fatalism or faith, and distrust of medical authority; explanations were often multi-dimensional. Comments included complaints about communication with physicians, health system discontinuities, and impact of social support. Explanations of participants' decisions reflected several ways of coping with an undesirable situation, including strategies for reducing, sustaining, and increasing uncertainty. Problematic Integration Theory helps to explain patients' difficulties in managing uncertainty when assessments of disease outcomes and treatment recommendations diverge. Implications for clinical communication include increasing trust while delivering bad news, understanding the source of resistance to recommendations, and discussing palliative care. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

A Loss of Faith: The Sources of Reduced Political Legitimacy for the American Medical Profession

THE MILBANK QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002
Mark Schlesinger
Writing at the beginning of the 20th century, Shaw identified one of the significant contemporary transformations in industrial democracies. In part as the result of advances in science and technology, in part as a rejection of the monopolistic abuses of industrialization, and in part as a consequence of assiduous efforts by the professions themselves, this was a period in which the legitimacy and social authority of professionals increased dramatically (Brint 1994; Krause 1996; Larson 1977; Sandel 1996). Nowhere was this more evident than in medicine. Over several decades, medicine changed from an occupation with a mixed reputation and little political influence into one that would "dominate both policy and lay perceptions of health problems" (Freidson 1994, 31). In a number of countries, the professional authority and political influence of physicians also rose during this era (Coburn, Torrance, and Kaufert 1983; Krause 1996; Stone 1980), most dramatically in the United States (Starr 1982). The political legitimacy and policymaking influence of the medical profession have greatly declined in American society over the past 30 years. Despite speculation about the causes, there has been little empirical research assessing the different explanations. To address this gap, data collected in 1995 are used to compare attitudes of the American public and policy elites toward medical authority. Statistical analyses reveal that (1) elites are more hostile to professional authority than is the public; (2) the sources of declining legitimacy are different for the public than they are for policy elites; and (3) the perceptions that most threaten the legitimacy of the medical profession pertain to doubts about professional competence, physicians' perceived lack of altruism, and limited confidence in the profession's political influence. This article concludes with some speculations about the future of professional authority in American medicine. [source]