Constructing the “good patient” in conventional and unconventional medical settings: roles, relationships, and information transfer

Abstract

This chapter is about the work that patients do to present themselves to their doctors as certain kinds of patients. The concept of “the task of doing: ‘being a good patient’“ is used to emphasize that patient self-presentation in medical interactions is not a static patient attribute but is rather a dynamic activity that patients and doctors negotiate during the medical encounter. Data segments of doctor-patient symptom-reporting interactions from a conventional and an unconventional medical setting are used to examine how differences in patient symptom reports in the two settings are linked to differences in the ways the patient and doctor orient to “the task of doing: ‘being a good patient’.” The analysis of these data segments suggests further that asymmetry in interaction in conventional settings limits, while mutuality in the unconventional setting promotes, the transfer of information between doctor and patient.

Citation

Katz, M. (2000), "Constructing the “good patient” in conventional and unconventional medical settings: roles, relationships, and information transfer", Jacobs Kronenfeld, J. (Ed.) Health, Illness, and use of Care: The Impact of Social Factors (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 183-206. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0275-4959(00)80028-9