Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
where it is used, and it therefore makes sense to look at the development
of medical technology and the way it is applied in clinical practice. This
means that it is necessary to understand 'how the technology is enveloped in
practice and practical circumstance' (Heath et al . 2003: 78).
In a review of publications on technology and medical practice over the
last 25 years in the journal Sociology of Health and Illness , Heath et al .
(2003) draw the conclusion that these publications reveal how 'practical
circumstances and contexts in healthcare bear upon the ways in which these
tools and technologies come to be perceived and understood' and that the
character of these technologies is 'determined by participants themselves
within the practicalities of their ordinary lives' (ibid: 83). Also, the features
and meaning of medical technology are dependent on, shaped and mediated
through social interaction in clinical practice. At the heart of this question
is the issue of the professional-patient relationship. As Brown and Webster
argue, the ' immediacy of the clinical encounter is the medium through which
the technology is experienced , whether as a one-off or a multiple series of
interactive events' (2004: 168, italics in original).
This 'points to the importance of placing the practical circumstances, the
situation in which tools and technologies are deployed, at the forefront of
analytical agenda' (Heath et al . 2003: 83) and the importance of taking
account of the local, the routine, practical and 'indigenous' use of the
technologies in everyday practice within specifi c courses of action and
interaction, something that is still largely unexplored. Furthermore, medical
technologies appear in a range of medical contexts, and medicine is in turn
embedded in wider social and cultural processes that involve understandings
of health, illness and the body. Important components of these understandings
have to do with how people are inclined to question medical knowledge and
practice at the same time as they look to medicine and medical technology
for new hopes for remedies (Williams and Calnan 1996).
In this topic we will address medical technology as it is used in clinical
practice, and explore the meanings medical technologies take on for the
patient as well as the health professional. To be able to look further into
these issues, we fi rst want to briefl y discuss the notion of the life-world
perspective, and how this perspective has been adapted to the study of health
and illness.
The life world and the world of medicine
In the social science exploration of the ways people in the Western cultures
relate to their illnesses, a recurrent theme through the decades has been the
relationship between, on the one hand, the patient, her body, experiences
and management of illness, and on the other hand, the needs of the medical
system to fi t the patient and her ailments into the administrative, cognitive and
procedural organization of modern medicine; that is, the way the ill person is
transformed into a legitimate patient in the medical health care system.
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