On the analysis of medical work: general practitioners, opiate abusing patients and medical sociology

Abstract

Although general practice has provided the setting for a wide range of medical sociological analyses, those analyses have rarely focussed upon the care of specific patient groups or illness conditions. In the main, medical sociologists have chosen to portray general practice more in terms of their own secular interests in the processes of, for example, power, domination and communication -processes which although evident within the consultation are not unique to it. This topical neglect of the care of specific patient groups within general practice is, I argue, part of a broader neglect of the topic of medical work as conceived by practitioners, which arises at least in part from a combination of methodological, theoretical, ideological and attitudinal factors. This paper uses the opportunity of a study focussing upon general practitioners' treatment of opiate abusing patients to explore these and related issues and concludes with a call for an applied sociology of medical practice.

Service Users’ and Caregivers’ Perspectives on Continuity of Care in Out-of-Hours Primary Care

“…This multilayered knowledge confirms the idea that knowledge of the service user is a "complex phenomenon" in general practice (Freeman, Walker, Heaney, & Howie, 2002). Furthermore, these insights resonate with interpretations of previously cited concepts in the relationship-continuity-of-care literature, such as ethnographic knowledge (McKeganey, 1989), biographical knowledge (Fairhurst & May, 2001), and the concept of "whole-person knowledge" (Kim et al, 2007).…”

Towards a sociology of tranquillizer prescribing

“…These would determine the extent to which patients have become reluctant to admit emotional problems to the doctor and what role the routine use of psycho-social questions by GPs is playing in the continuing prescribing of minor tranquillizers. As McKeganey (1989) has recently argued, medical sociologists need to focus on such medical work both because of the sociological insights that can be gained and because of the benefits which might accrue to GPs themselves. In the case of tranquillizer prescribing information about the processes which lead to a prescription should be of particular benefit to GPs who wish to alter their prescribing behaviour in the light of current public concern about these drugs.…”