Week 8: Experience and Meaning of Illness Flashcards
The Sick Role
-Illness is social and not just biological
-How other people respond and how you act when you are sick
-The patient enters a role called sanction deviances
illness/sickness disturbed the functionality of society
-A sick individual is not a productive member of society
-It is the role of the medical professor to control this role
Illness as a Role
Illness is a social role
-The sick person has a role of
being sick
-There is social norms within being sick
4 Norms of Illness as a Role
2 Rights
-The sick person is exempt from “normal Social roles and responsibilities
-The sick person is not responsible for his or her condition
2 Obligations
1. You need to get better and not be sick better
- You need to seek medical help and cooperate with physicians
Functions of the Sick Role
-Optimism rooted in the ideals
-The sick role gives individuals the allowance to
take a break for now
-If people stay sick, society would break down
-Physicians prevent people from using illness from personal gain
Functions of Hospitals
-Bring sick person back to society
-Hospitals are unpleasant places
-Don’t make them as comfortable so that people don’t want to stay in the hospitals
Criticisms of Sick Role
- Limited time perspective
-Illness is a temporary illness
-what happens before and after people become sick
- Illness types
-Doesn’t apply to chronic illness
-Doesn’t apply to illness where people are held responsible
-Sick role only very sick patients who are less sicks
3.The doctor and patient
-Paternalistic view of doctor-patient relationship
-People don’t always listen to doctors
- Social Factors
-Doesn’t examine social decisions
Elliot Friedsons
-Illness is a socially constructed phenomenon
-Brings in patients perspectives to the illness experience
Why patients don’t follow doctor’s orders ?
-Failure to understand
-Patients and doctors perceive
-symptoms differently than what they are told
-The symbolic meaning of medication
-Problems in doctor-patient communication
2 Definitions of Illness
1.Poor health resulting from disease of body or mind
- A disease
Examples of the Meaning
-Body Image and Eating Disorders
-Social roots of how a female body should look
-There is different types of beauty Morally constructed
-Link weight with health
Thinner = healthier
Objectification Theory
Self-Objectification Theory
-Women view their bodies and themselves as objects
-Body surveillance
-Body shame
The Missing Voice of the Critically Ill: a Medical Sociologist’s First-Person Account
-David A. Rier
A sociologist becomes critically ill and we see his point of view as a critically ill patient in a medical Situation
Key Takeaways:
-Critically Ill patients are underrepresented because they in most causes do not have the means to communicate
-There is physiological factor that plays into a diagnosis that a doctor might with hold in order to keep the patient sanity
-parson’s ideals of putting trust wholey in to medical professionals is not at all wrong especially when it comes to critically ill patients
-Critically ill patients are too ill to make decisions and negotiate with doctors
Whose Death’s Matter?
-Armstrong
Why are different diseases more or less popular in the media ?
-Depends on the amount of people affected
-What population is affected
-Lower SES = less attention
-Effects the way society perceives the disease and the way it is perceived
-More attention = more advocacy = more newsworthy
Race, gender, SES
Whose Deaths Matter?
-Armstrong
Looks at 7 different diseases 6 which are infectious and the last ones was HIV/Aids
Key takeaways
-Media Prescence and coverage effect the outlook and therefore the outcome of a disease
How does each condition of Critical, Acute, and Chronic Fit into Parsons sick role ?
Acute-Fits into Parsons sick role of the older model. You can adhere to doctors orders for a short period of time and be the sick person for a short period time before being pushed into becoming better.
Chronic - Fits in terms of having accommodations and certain exceptions. However, it is contrary to the sick role because the whole basis is that are eventually going to be “healed”. This does not happen for the chronic ill
Critical- Fits with the parson in that you are listening to the doctors to get out of critical care and into to healthiness. However this may never happen like chronic illness.
