Sociology of the Medical-Patient Relationship: Putting Flesh on the Bones of a Stick Figure

Jose Luis Turabian

doi:10.31579/2639-4162/034

Abstract

Any activity, including science, and the doctor-patient relationship, depends on society. The institution of medicine is based on social relationships that are defined exclusively by experts, and this involves cultural definitions, values and techniques. The institutions define the right practices independently of the people involved. Social practices are full of conventions, uses, rituals, styles, modes, procedures, laws, etc. Institutional power defines the individual doctor-patient relationship. This scenario places limits on the positivist view of the patient-centered relationship. Social institutions make their social agents-doctors-first interested in outputs, products or results (cures, prescriptions, visits, demand, hospital admissions, diagnoses, morbidity, mortality), but not in social relationships, which they are frequently hidden or distorted. In this way, the doctor-patient relationship is frequently trivialized and treated in a child-like manner as a professional matter: it is presented in the biomedical literature as a stick figure; a "prehistoric" oversimplification that is little likes the current reality. The sociological approach brings doctor-patient relationship to the surface, making it visible, demystifying and problematizing it. The general practitioner should: 1. Go from medicalizing social relations, including the doctor-patient relationship, to socially contextualize medical practice and the doctor-patient relationship; And 2. Take charge of social problems from the consultation, understanding that social problems are part of the consultation and the doctor-patient relationship.

Highlights

“A stick figure is a very simple drawing of a person or animal, composed of a few lines, curves, and dots
The cognitive identity of medical sociology has developed in a historical perspective in the context of a specific double frame of reference including medicine and general sociology
The social study of health began as medical sociology and morphed into sociology of health and illness, focusing largely on the social aspects of healthrelated topics

Summary

Introduction

“A stick figure is a very simple drawing of a person or animal, composed of a few lines, curves, and dots. Doctor-patient relationship is conformed by several aspects, among which we can point out the doctor-patient communication, the patient's participation in decision-making and the patient's satisfaction These characteristics have been associated with the physician's communication behavior and the patient's autonomy in medical care [2]. The doctor-patient relationship has been subject, in the course of social development, to changes. To understand this doctor-patient relationship we need the sociological view [3]. The result is an impoverishment of sociological analysis on at least three levels: social scientists have rarely made diseases central to their inquiries; they have been reluctant to include clinical endpoints in their analysis; and they have largely bracketed the normative purpose of health interventions. There is an interdisciplinary gap between GM and sociology, which is detrimental to the investigation of the social aspects of health

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion