Place Matters in Context Analysis

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the construct of “patients’ experience of context,” specifically in relation to questions of vantage point, representation, and place in health care research. It discusses the question of how patients might experience context for their illness in a multiorganizational health care system. Assuming that actors engage with and experience contexts differently, it discusses potential consequences for the current fragmented and distributed organization of cancer care for involvement of patients in their own care. The chapter focuses on two important but often overlooked dimensions: place (where people are) and knowing (what and how people know), and, importantly, how these two dimensions relate to one another. These dimensions are central components of the collaboration between patients and health care professionals, the distribution of work in different places, the fragmentation of knowledge, responsibility, and activities across different parts of their process. The chapter ends by discussing the benefits of posing two simple questions in relation to context in health care: Whose context is it, and from where is context studied?