Lens Of Care Experience
Understanding the experience of the patient through the lens of care
Introduction
Drawing on my own ethnographic findings, and further enriched with that of others in a hospital context, this essay will deconstruct a patient’s experience of care in an intensive care unit (ICU) and place different aspects of it within a broader theoretical framework of care. Primarily, I will discuss how and why a patient in an ICU experiences feelings of de-humanisation. This discussion will elucidate the changes that a person goes through as they become a patient within a hospital, during which they are subject to a total uprooting of normal routine and an adjustment in relationships that they have with their own body. From these points, the theme of power …show more content…
(2009), who draw attention to the de-humanising and subsequently humanising elements in caring systems, the following factors are amongst those that can be identified as what contribute to making us feel human: agency, subjectivity, uniqueness, a sense of place, togetherness and a sense of embodiment. When one becomes so ill that they are hospitalised, the person (both body and mind) is likely to go through a number of unfamiliar changes that have the potential to totally alter their usual sense of being, and further disrupt access to humanising characteristics that they are used to living with. Such changes will be enacted upon the body, internally and externally, directly and indirectly and all too often can cause feelings of de-humanisation within the patient. With view of using ‘humanisation as a value base for guiding care’ (Todres et al., 2009:69), I will begin by drawing upon Todres et al.’s (2009) discussion to follow the patient’s experience and highlight the various points at which a person becomes de-humanised as a result of both medicalised discourse and medical actions within a …show more content…
Foucault argues that physicians have authority and maintain great power within the clinic as a result of their medical knowledge. Their expert understanding of the pathological processes of the human body can penetrate illusions of outdated theories and unveil the ‘truth’ about the disease that a patient is experiencing (Foucault, 1963). Louisa’s answer, when asked about her autonomy in hospital, illustrates this point:
“ I had absolutely no power to make decisions about what happened to my body. But I knew that they had to do what they had to do. They would never ask how I felt about having things injected into me or rubbed all over me. I guess I just totally trusted that they were doing their job with my best interest at
Introduction
Drawing on my own ethnographic findings, and further enriched with that of others in a hospital context, this essay will deconstruct a patient’s experience of care in an intensive care unit (ICU) and place different aspects of it within a broader theoretical framework of care. Primarily, I will discuss how and why a patient in an ICU experiences feelings of de-humanisation. This discussion will elucidate the changes that a person goes through as they become a patient within a hospital, during which they are subject to a total uprooting of normal routine and an adjustment in relationships that they have with their own body. From these points, the theme of power …show more content…
(2009), who draw attention to the de-humanising and subsequently humanising elements in caring systems, the following factors are amongst those that can be identified as what contribute to making us feel human: agency, subjectivity, uniqueness, a sense of place, togetherness and a sense of embodiment. When one becomes so ill that they are hospitalised, the person (both body and mind) is likely to go through a number of unfamiliar changes that have the potential to totally alter their usual sense of being, and further disrupt access to humanising characteristics that they are used to living with. Such changes will be enacted upon the body, internally and externally, directly and indirectly and all too often can cause feelings of de-humanisation within the patient. With view of using ‘humanisation as a value base for guiding care’ (Todres et al., 2009:69), I will begin by drawing upon Todres et al.’s (2009) discussion to follow the patient’s experience and highlight the various points at which a person becomes de-humanised as a result of both medicalised discourse and medical actions within a …show more content…
Foucault argues that physicians have authority and maintain great power within the clinic as a result of their medical knowledge. Their expert understanding of the pathological processes of the human body can penetrate illusions of outdated theories and unveil the ‘truth’ about the disease that a patient is experiencing (Foucault, 1963). Louisa’s answer, when asked about her autonomy in hospital, illustrates this point:
“ I had absolutely no power to make decisions about what happened to my body. But I knew that they had to do what they had to do. They would never ask how I felt about having things injected into me or rubbed all over me. I guess I just totally trusted that they were doing their job with my best interest at