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Giving patients a future: the constituting of classes in an acute medical unit
Author(s) -
Latimer J.
Publication year - 1997
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.ep10934396
Subject(s) - futures contract , unit (ring theory) , ethnography , work (physics) , medical unit , sociology , medicine , psychology , medical emergency , business , engineering , anthropology , mathematics education , mechanical engineering , finance
Drawing on an ethnography of conduct within an acute medical unit, the paper explores how nurses and doctors constitute classes of patient to help accomplish their ordering work. For example, patients such as older people and those who are chronically sick are figured as having only limited medical futures. The current analysis suggests that staff deploy patients’ (perceived) social identities to help (re)figure them in particular ways to organise disposal. However, disposalemerges not so much as an effect of staffs moves, but as a mode of ordering in a world of multiple domains.