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Medical Work: Accommodating a Body of Knowledge to Practice
Author(s) -
De Santis Grace
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10487775
Subject(s) - division of labour , medical knowledge , work (physics) , specialty , sociology of scientific knowledge , theme (computing) , process (computing) , accommodation , task (project management) , body of knowledge , knowledge worker , production (economics) , public relations , sociology , knowledge management , engineering ethics , psychology , medical education , medicine , political science , computer science , management , social science , family medicine , engineering , law , economics , mechanical engineering , neuroscience , macroeconomics , operating system
It is the purpose of this paper to examine the relationship between the production of new scientific knowledge and the application of that knowledge to medical practice. The paper focuses, first, on the growth of the scientific enterprise and argues that the expanding medical division of labor is the profession's accommodation to the increased size of its body of knowledge. The paper goes on to discuss the emergent role of a new category of workers in that division of labor, clinical researchers. The second major focus of the paper concerns the relationship among medical specialists, who must allocate the new scientific discoveries among themselves. The final portion of the paper identifies the components of the process which accomplishes the task of distributing medical work among the specialty communities. The issue of primary concern to this discussion, which appears only as an underlying theme until the concluding section, is the effect of this allocation process on the structure of the medical profession and the type of medical care it delivers.