The Work of the Patient in Recovery from Serious Illness or Injury

• In Event: 480 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 10. Illness Experience

Abstract

This paper examines patients’ recovery from serious illness or injury. There is an extensive literature examining the process of becoming a patient, also termed illness behaviour, but comparatively little is known about emergence from the role of patient as recovery progresses. Medical sociological attention has focussed on patients suffering from illness rather than those who have sustained injury, and those with a chronic as distinct from an acute condition. The paper presents a secondary analysis of 165 qualitative interview transcripts taken from four datasets. Three datasets (on adult patients’ experiences of heart attacks, leukaemia and intensive care) were from the archive of the Health Experience Research Group (HERG) at the University of Oxford. The fourth dataset was from the UK Burden of Injury Study (UKBOI) (Lyons et al 2007) and comprised qualitative interviews with adults who had been hospitalised following injury. In the division of labour in health care, the work undertaken by patients themselves may be overlooked (Strauss et al 1997, Parsons et al 2008). This paper considers the work of patients recovering from serious illness and injury: understanding, complying and engaging with treatment and rehabilitation; emotional labour; resuming pre-event roles; and making sense of, and coming to terms with, what has happened and together with the attendant identity work.

Authors

• Hilary Thomas, University of Hertfordshire

• Sarah Earthy, University of Surrey

• Judith Sleney, University of Surrey, UK