Openness and Specialisation: Dealing with Patients in a Hospital Emergency Service
Abstract
The hospital is characterised by a dual orientation: being open to the heterogenous demands for medical care that are spontaneously directed to it, and selecting patients in terms of their match with medical specialties represented in its different services. This tension is at the heart of the functioning of emergency services. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a French teaching hospital, the article examines the consequences of this duality on the concrete organisation of work. It shows the main dimensions that go to make up the patient’s mobilising worth : closeness to the core of real emergencies; social demands; the intellectual interest of the case; questions raised by transfers of responsibility between doctors. For each dimension, it studies staff reactions and gives some indications about their complexity. Finally it suggests some comparisons between these results and the observations made by several studies conducted in American and UK hospitals since the 1970s.
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Perceptions of social deservingness may play a role in adjudications.
“In addition, perceptions of social “deservingness” may play a role [61,62].”
From Conducting a critical interpretive synthesis of the literature on access to healthcare by vulnerable groups (2006) · cites this paper as [62]
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- Authors
- Dodier, N., & Camus, A.
- Venue
- Sociology of Health & Illness
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1998-07
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 413-444
- ISSN
- 0141-9889 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9566
- OpenAlex
- W2049027320
- Cited by
- 57
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 0.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Sociology of Health & Illness (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Emergency Medicine › Emergency and Acute Care Studies
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Services Management and Policy
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare Systems and Challenges
- Keywords
- hospital emergency services, patient mobilization, medical specialization, hospital organization, work organization, physician-patient relationship, patient selection, teaching hospitals
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