CENTRAL ANALYTICAL CATEGORY OF CONTEMPORARY MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY: LAYMEN’S ACTIONS IN ILLNESS AND HEALTH

• Authors: Skrzypek Michal
• Languages of publication: LV EN RU

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this study is to present the scientific identity of medical sociology as a sociological subdiscipline from the perspective of the characteristics of its leading analytical trend focused on the actions and interpretations of ‘ordinary people’ in health and illness. This trend has given rise to the model of lay empowerment in the issues of health and illness. The empowerment of lay people manifests itself inter alia in their role of consultants in illness (Eliot Freidson’s concept of the ‘lay referral system’), and in taking active measures in the context of daily life, intended to cope with consequences of chronic diseases (Anselm Strauss’s activist concept of illness trajectory). It results in the change in the distribution of power in doctor-patient relationship: patients play an active role in the process of clinical decision making and medical treatment (the model of doctor-patient partnership). Sociomedical analyses point out that the growing empowerment of ordinary people in health and illness is connected inter alia with the specificity of the health situation in civilized developed countries, consisting in the prevalence of chronic non-infectious diseases and in the erosion of dominance and authority of institutional medicine. The elements of the social reality of health and illness discussed in this article were originally described in the American realities by F. Davis, E. Freidson, A. Strauss, K. Charmaz, and by other representatives of the theoretical tradition of symbolic interactionism. The problems in question have been investigated in Polish medical sociology (this issue requires a separate study). What is still a challenge is to undertake investigations that will verify the theses presented here in Latvian society.

Keywords

EN

medical sociology,; sociology of illness experience,; humanistic sociology.

• Publisher: Daugavpils University, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Journal: Sociālo Zinātņu Vēstnesis
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 105-119

Contributors

author

Skrzypek Michal

Identifiers

ISSN

1691-1881