{"title":"'To improve quality of life': Diverging enactments of a value in nephrology clinical practices.","authors":"Anna Mann","doi":"10.1177/13634593231200128","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Quality of life has become a central value in the provision of healthcare for patients with chronic conditions. This has engendered debates in critical medical sociology on the non-neutral effects that valuing health and illness, medical interventions, and health care delivery in terms of quality of life yields. Focusing on the case of nephrology, this paper presents qualitative data collected in Austria of two dialysis units in which nephrologists initiated projects aimed towards 'the improvement of patients' quality of life'. Whereas the first involved nurses supporting patients in the administration of peritoneal dialysis at home, the second implied the provision of treatment and care exclusively focused on a well-being 'in the here and now' to patients. By conceptualising physicians as actors within networks of relations and values enacted in practices, it analyses how in both dialysis units reference to quality of life enabled nephrologists to problematise the provision of standard haemodialysis treatment to multi-morbid, elderly patients, to develop a new treatment protocol, and to interest and enrol others in the provision of healthcare according this new protocol. Valuing medical interventions in terms of quality of life not only leads to a governmentalization of living and an economisation of health. It also allows physicians to articulate a socio-medico-ethical problem - the availability of life-prolonging technologies for a growing population of elderly, multi-morbid patients - and develop solutions locally. What the solutions consist in may fundamentally differ, however.</p>","PeriodicalId":12944,"journal":{"name":"Health","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Health","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13634593231200128","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/9/29 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PUBLIC, ENVIRONMENTAL & OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Quality of life has become a central value in the provision of healthcare for patients with chronic conditions. This has engendered debates in critical medical sociology on the non-neutral effects that valuing health and illness, medical interventions, and health care delivery in terms of quality of life yields. Focusing on the case of nephrology, this paper presents qualitative data collected in Austria of two dialysis units in which nephrologists initiated projects aimed towards 'the improvement of patients' quality of life'. Whereas the first involved nurses supporting patients in the administration of peritoneal dialysis at home, the second implied the provision of treatment and care exclusively focused on a well-being 'in the here and now' to patients. By conceptualising physicians as actors within networks of relations and values enacted in practices, it analyses how in both dialysis units reference to quality of life enabled nephrologists to problematise the provision of standard haemodialysis treatment to multi-morbid, elderly patients, to develop a new treatment protocol, and to interest and enrol others in the provision of healthcare according this new protocol. Valuing medical interventions in terms of quality of life not only leads to a governmentalization of living and an economisation of health. It also allows physicians to articulate a socio-medico-ethical problem - the availability of life-prolonging technologies for a growing population of elderly, multi-morbid patients - and develop solutions locally. What the solutions consist in may fundamentally differ, however.
期刊介绍:
Health: is published four times per year and attempts in each number to offer a mix of articles that inform or that provoke debate. The readership of the journal is wide and drawn from different disciplines and from workers both inside and outside the health care professions. Widely abstracted, Health: ensures authors an extensive and informed readership for their work. It also seeks to offer authors as short a delay as possible between submission and publication. Most articles are reviewed within 4-6 weeks of submission and those accepted are published within a year of that decision.