Toward a Sociology of Prognosis

• In Event: 4256 - Risk, Diagnosis, and Prognosis

Abstract

Prognosis is central to medicine, but the concept and practice, unlike diagnosis, has not garnered sustained attention among medical sociologists. With the exception of the groundbreaking work of a few scholars in past decades, there have not been robust calls for the systematic study of prognosis using a sociological lens. We examine how prognosis has been discussed in the medical literature over the past century, and we also analyze how medical sociologists have defined or used prognosis in their empirical work. We find that prognosis is sometimes conceptualized as a direction, as an endpoint, or as a mediator or moderator for other social processes and outcomes. We discuss how a renewed analytic focus on prognosis would fruitfully intersect with several current trends in medicine, medical technology, and medical sociology. Specifically, we highlight how the rise of anticipatory medicine, along with the widespread use of predictive medical technologies among even healthy populations, alters the contemporary landscape of prognosis and prognostication. Finally, we argue that a greater awareness of the social trajectory and social dimensions of prognosis would provide deeper understandings of patient experiences, illness trajectories, and health disparities in the twenty-first century.

Authors

• Miranda R. Waggoner, Florida State University

• Harry Barbee, Florida State University