When You Know: Trust and Authority in Medical Prognosis and Decision Making

• In Event: Technicalities of Trust and Technologies of Sensing

Abstract

Drawing on a 30-month ethnography of hospital cardiology, I discuss the role of the physician’s body in clinical prognosis and decision making. Against the background of a high-tech, cognitively-distributed work environment, I focus on four embodiment processes of medical expertise and authority: (1) the technological augmentation of clinical decision making and treatment; (2) the body work of human anatomy visualization; (3) the development and practice of technical and surgical skills; and (4) the sensorial compounding of distributed clinical evaluations. Taken together, these processes illuminate the indispensable corporeality of medical prospection and expertise. What is more, they help clarify how prospective action establishes credibility and trust in an expertise domain ostensibly averse to prognosis.

Author

• Phaedra Daipha, D3-Allstate