Abstract
Care-concepts have proliferated over the past couple of years, and have been used tostudy all kinds of practices, situations and sites. This begs the question: What is gained bystudying practices in terms of care? The paper addresses this question by using a specificcare-approach, which is the study of daily life dealings (Mol et al., 2010). It mobilises thisapproach to investigate a particular object, namely a good provision of haemodialysistreatment in nephrology practice. It does so in a given place, a dialysis unit in Austria.Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a focus on how patients' quality of life was improved,the paper reports how, in this dialysis unit, a quality of life questionnaire was introducedbut soon abandoned. It first analyses how the prominent ideal that quality of life is to bemeasured with a questionnaire arrived in the goings-on in the unit. It then teases out howconnecting and disconnecting patients to dialysis machines, and seeing them during thedaily round enacted knowing, improving and quality of life in other ways than the prominentpractice. It argues that questionnaires, forms, protocols, and the prominent practice theyare part of may not only be made to fit into daily clinical practices or that daily life dealingsare other to prominent practices. Daily clinical practices may also be the basis upon whichquestionnaires, forms, protocols, and the prominent practice they are part of are evaluated,abandoned, and forgotten. Recommending further investigation into the conditions ofpossibilities for alternative enactments of a good provision of health care to thrive, thepaper concludes that what has been gained by using this specific care-approach to studythis particular object are insights into daily life practices that have so far been othered innephrology practice and STS.
Highlights
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Like every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Herr Fialka had been brought by the ambulance to the dialysis unit of the City Hospital shortly before 7:00
He had stood on the scale, strolled into Room 1, and climbed into one of the beds. As soon as he was lying down, Angelika had started attentively touching two knobs on Herr Fialka's upper left thigh. These were arteries that had been surgically connected with veins, "fistulas." They served as access to Herr Fialka's vascular system
Summary
Care-concepts have proliferated over the past couple of years, and have been used to study all kinds of practices, situations and sites. The paper addresses this question by using a specific care-approach, which is the study of daily life dealings (Mol et al, 2010) It mobilises this approach to investigate a particular object, namely a good provision of haemodialysis treatment in nephrology practice. In 2016, I happened to be very inspired by the care-approach developed by Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser, and Jeannette Pols They have, as already mentioned, urged us to investigate care through a study of daily life practices that tend to the body, its pains and pleasures, the fragility and fleshiness of life.. They have, as already mentioned, urged us to investigate care through a study of daily life practices that tend to the body, its pains and pleasures, the fragility and fleshiness of life.4 They have done so by setting out to sites that advertise themselves as providing "health care" or "nursing care", such as diabetes outpatient clinics, nursing homes, and long-term psychiatric wards.
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