SOC 1000 CH. 14 (Health)

What are 2 major subtypes of sociology that are large parts of medical sociology in particular?

Policy + critical

What is policy sociology?

Seeks to improve delivery of health services through sociologically informed research

What is critical sociology?

Examines the practices of multinational pharmaceutical companies, medical schools, and privately run, for-profit clinics and hospitals

Who introduced the medical sociology term “sick role” (or patient role)?

Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons (“sick role”) argued that being sick came with 4 expectations. What do 1,2 and 3,4 come from, respectively?

1, 2 = relate to what the sick person can expect from society

3, 4= identify what society should expect of the sick person

What are the 4 expectations of the sick role?

1. Exempt from social responsibilities

2. Taken care of by others

3. Socially obligated to try to get well

4. Socially obligated to seek help

Structural ___________ presumes social uniformity of experiences

“functionalism”

List 5 social factors that affect an individual's experience of the medical professions

Race, gender, ethnicity, age, and class

Who critiqued Parson’s view of the sick role?

E.L. Koos

A critique of the sick role is that it focuses on _____ illness rather than chronic illness

“acute”

Which class of people were better able to play the sick role according to Earl Koos' study?

Higher-class occupational groups

Who is generally the least likely member of the family to play the sick role if the whole family gets sick?

The mother

Who proposed new expectations for Canadians in the sick role?

Ivan Emke

What are the 2 expectations Ivan Emke proposed for Canadians in the sick role?

1. Patients in the new economy are responsible for their own illnesses

2. A patient in the new economy must “tread lightly”, not to be trusted

A medical breakthrough of the nineteenth century was the realization that every disease has a?

Natural course it goes through

What is the “natural course” (3) of disease?

Get ill → experience symptoms → get well (or sicker)

A disease or disorder also goes through a _____ course

“social”

What is a social course in the context of disease?

The social interactions that a person goes through in the process of being treated

The natural course of disease depends on what?

The virus or bacterium and the way the individual human body reacts to it

The social course of disease and disorder is affected by

Sociological factors

In the author's experience in the sick role, what were the two main things that affected his social course of healing?

Occupational/class status + marital status

What is biomedicine?

Application or use of Western scientific principles in the diagnosis + treatment of disease

Biomedicine has been criticized for approaching health from a _________ perspective

“reductionist”

What is a reductionist perspective in the context of medicine?

Attributes medical conditions to a single factor treatable

What is the term for approaches to treatment that fall outside conventional biomedical practice?

Alternative (or complementary) medicine

Chang + Christakis defined what term, referring to the process by which certain behaviours are defined as medical problems → medical intervention becomes the focus of remedy?

Medicalization

How has medicalization been criticized as a form of reductionism?

Reduces complex medical conditions to biomedical causes without examining possible sociocultural or political factors (also focuses on human body)

Who introduced the notion of medicalization to sociology in the context of his critique of radical monopolies?

Ivan Illich

What does Ivan Illich’s concept of iatrogenesis refer to?

Doctor-generated epidemics that avert people from preventing/treating their illnesses

What are the 3 kinds of iatrogenesis?

Clinical, social, cultural

What is clinical iatrogensis?

Diagnosis + cure can cause problems that are as bad or even worse than the health problem they have

What is social iatrogenesis?

When political conditions that render society “unhealthy” are hidden

What is cultural iatrogenesis?

Abilities of the medical community praised while patients are given no credit for their recovery

What does “Big Pharma” describe?

Large pharmaceutical companies that profit from developing + selling drugs

One group that has been particularly opposed to medicalization is the?

Deaf community

When does a disease become racialized?

When it is strongly associated with people of a particular racial background, so these people are treated negatively

This Ontario program for immigrant doctors has very limited space and is thus a barrier to immigrant doctors practicing in Canada

The Ontario International Medical Graduate Program

Why do Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador have higher percentages of foreign-trained doctors than other provinces?

There are fewer obstacles for immigrant doctors

An exodus of educated professionals from one country into another, usually search of higher pay, is called a?

Brain drain

When a "race" or gender is blocked from becoming health professionals, this is referred to as?

Medical marginality

Who was the first female Canadian physician in Canada, who also faced many barriers and harassment due to her gender?

Emily Howard Jennings Stowe

What term referred to when status Indians/registered band members would have their Indigenous status taken away from them by the federal government if they received a university degree in Canada?

Enfranchisement

Who introduced the idea of inverse care law?

Dr. Julian Tudor Hart

What is inverse care law?

The idea that the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served

The inverse care law was most evident in what type of mortality rates in England from 1949 to 1953?

Infant mortality rates

What was the strongest social variable affecting infant mortality in the British context?

Social class

What is the framework for presenting and interpreting disability that is determined and directed by doctors, specialists, and other medical practitioners?

Medical Model

Economic models of disability are those that?

view people with disabilities in terms of their contributions to, or drain on, the economy

Who is considered the “father” of the sociology of disability?

Irving K. Zola

What is a working definition that we can use for statistical purposes called?

An operational definition

What type of sociological theory teaches us to be suspicious of binaries?

Postmodernist theory

How does a sympathetic economic model view people?

By their ability to perform meaningful labour

How does an unsympathetic economic model view people?

As a “drain” on the state

What sociologist said “McJobs are bad for kids”?

Amitai Etzioni

What models center around the idea that any human social category (e.g. race) is not natural, but important socially

Social constructionist

Critical disability theory aims for _________ equality rather than formal equality

“substantive”

What is substantive equality?

Building modifications that guarantee people with natural impairments equal accessibility (e.g. ramp for those with wheelchairs)

What is the formal equality model?

Everyone faces and must adapt to the same socially driven architecture that gives advantages to able-bodied people

What is the science of "improving" the population by controlled breeding to limit the incidence of certain heritable characteristics called?

Eugenics

What happened to Inuit tuberculosis patients when health professionals brought north by ship conducted their patient examinations?

Evacuees judged sick were sent ashore without the chance to say goodbye or make arrangements