Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and bodies become categorized in the clinical context. Then, we will look
into patients' experiences and understandings of their encounters with the
medical world and medical technology, and their understanding of themselves
and their bodies as healthy and normal - or not. Throughout the topic, we
will draw on examples of technology that, in different ways, intervene into
the everyday lives of people and (potentially) have an impact on their life
course and expectations for the future: reproductive health technologies,
technologies for early detection of serious or life-threatening diseases and
technologies that will intervene into the well-being of individuals.
All the chapters in this topic are based on studies carried out in Sweden.
This means that the empirical studies we discuss are set within the same
general frame in terms of culture and health care system. Even if some
aspects of this background might be specifi c to Sweden, such as details of
the health care organization, the issues we want to discuss in this topic are
related to experiences and dilemmas in the use of medical technology that
are not limited to national contexts but more general and shared in modern
medicine.
In Chapter 2, Lars-Christer Hydén and Antje Lumma discuss the
development and use of communicative technology and ideology in modern
medicine with a focus on the relationship between the medical doctor and
the patient. Communicative strategies and practices are seen as a type of
social technology alongside other types of 'technical' technologies most
commonly associated with medicine. Modern medical practice is among
other things characterized by the fact that medical doctors have to investigate
not only the bodily interior of patients, but also the social and moral space
of patients. This means that medical professionals have to be able to talk
with patients in many different types of medical contexts and also be able to
talk about topics that are related to the patient's life world. In many medical
educational programs, learning to talk with patients has the status of an
independent course. In this chapter, examples from one such course are used
in order to illustrate problems in learning to talk with patients.
In Chapter 3, Anette Forss discusses the ways assessment of normality
and abnormality is carried out in everyday laboratory work, based on a one-
year-long ethnographic study conducted at two cytology laboratories. As the
interpreter of the Pap smear, a screening test which has become routine in
health care for women, the cytodiagnostician has a central role in determining
the need for further investigation of cellular abnormalities, something that
has implications for both patients and professionals. In the chapter, the daily
work of analysing and classifying cells down the microscope is described
and analysed. Drawing on a theoretical framework on visualization and
classifi cation, it is argued that screening cytology, including the Pap smear,
can be seen as (em)bodied seeing. The biological maps of cells and cultural
notions are mobilized and intertwined by the cytodiagnostician when
interpreting cells, and the study reveals that cytodiagnosticians are highly
aware of this interpretative nature of cytological assessments. In conclusion,
