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Biomedical subjects

D Lupton

Publications and source records attributed to D Lupton.

32 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

Risk as moral danger: the social and political functions of risk discourse in public health.

Risk is a concept with multiple meanings and is ideologically loaded. The author reviews the literature on risk perception and risk as a sociocultural construct, with particular reference to the domain of public health. Pertinent examples of the political and moral function of risk discourse in public health are given. The author concludes that risk discourse is often used to blame the victim, to displace the real reasons for ill-health upon the individual, and to express outrage at behavior deemed socially unacceptable, thereby exerting control over the body politic as well as the body corporeal. Risk discourse is redolent with the ideologies of mortality, danger, and divine retribution. Risk, as it is used in modern society, therefore cannot be considered a neutral term.

Australia↗
PubMed1993

The construction of patienthood in medical advertising.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the dominant symbolic elements, themes, and discourses used in drug advertisements published in a weekly magazine directed toward physicians. The discussion is concerned with both the visual signs and textual format of the advertisements, analyzing their attempts to create images around the drugs that appeal to the medical readership of the magazine. With the premise that the producers of the advertisements drew upon shared knowledge and belief systems of their medical audience to create a meaningful image for the drugs, the focus of the article is upon the portrayal of patients in the advertisements, with particular interest in gendered representations. The author argues that the way in which patients are portrayed visually and verbally in such advertisements is revealing of the ideological dimension of the doctor-patient relationship within the biomedical system of healing, including notions of the mechanical man and the vulnerable woman as archetypal patients.

Advertising↗
PubMed1993

Back to bedlam? Chelmsford and the press.

The Australian press played a vital part in bringing the events at Chelmsford Private Hospital to the attention of the general public, and in pressuring the New South Wales government to institute a Royal Commission into Deep Sleep Therapy. This paper describes the ways in which the press brought Chelmsford events onto the public agenda. It pays particular attention to aspects of the press coverage of the findings of the Royal Commission. The paper identifies the discourses concerning psychiatric care, the doctor-patient relationship and the role of the government in regulating the medical profession which were dominant in press accounts of Chelmsford. It is argued that while pre-existing stereotypes about mad psychiatrists and asylums were used to describe Chelmsford, more confronting ideas concerning the need for medical regulation and patient consumerism received press attention and therefore a public airing. The implications for psychiatric care in Australia are examined.

Cause of Death↗
PubMed1992

Discourse analysis: a new methodology for understanding the ideologies of health and illness.

Discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry which has been little employed by public health practitioners. The methodology involves a focus upon the sociocultural and political context in which text and talk occur. Discourse analysis is, above all, concerned with a critical analysis of the use of language and the reproduction of dominant ideologies (belief systems) in discourse (defined here as a group of ideas or patterned way of thinking which can both be identified in textual and verbal communications and located in wider social structures). Discourse analysis adds a linguistic approach to an understanding of the relationship between language and ideology, exploring the way in which theories of reality and relations of power are encoded in such aspects as the syntax, style and rhetorical devices used in texts. This paper argues that discourse analysis is pertinent to the concerns of public health, for it has the potential to lay bare the ideological dimension of such phenomena as lay health beliefs, the doctor-patient relationship, and the dissemination of health information in the entertainment mass media. This dimension is often neglected by public health research. The method of discourse analysis is explained, and examples of its use in the area of public health given.

Communication↗
PubMed1991

Caveat emptor or blissful ignorance? Patients and the consumerist ethos.

The notion that consumerist behaviour is, or should be, prevalent amongst individuals seeking health care has underlain recent United States and British governmental policy directives. Consumer groups make similar assumptions when exhorting individuals to treat health care like any other service. This paper enquires to what extent patients conceive of themselves and others as adopting consumerist behaviour when seeking and evaluating primary health care. Three hundred and thirty-three patients attending general practices in Sydney, Australia, were asked in open-ended questions to state why they chose their regular doctor, why they continued to visit that doctor, if they had ever changed their doctor, if they thought most people could tell if a doctor were good or bad, and what qualities they thought constituted a good and bad doctor. It is concluded that the patients surveyed tended not to think of themselves as consumers who should be wary of the quality of service offered by doctors. Rather they preferred to trust their doctor, and therefore did not devote effort to actively seeking out information about their doctor or evaluating his or her services.

Australia↗
PubMed1991

Primary health care consumerism amongst elderly Australians.

Despite acceptance of many of the principles justifying government intervention in health care provision and financing, much recent market-based policy in Australia, the USA and the UK has been based on the assumption that patients have the potential to behave as 'good consumers'. Good consumers are patients with the ability and desire to seek out health care of good quality and reasonable cost. In this paper, an exploratory survey of general practice attenders in Western and Northern Sydney is reported. The aim of the survey was to assess the extent to which patients critically select and evaluate their general practitioner, as a good consumer may be expected to do. The results demonstrate a lack of consumer-oriented behaviour both in general and amongst older respondents in particular. If such results hold true, market-based health care policies relying on consumers to judge quality of care are likely to be detrimental to the health of older people.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Consumerism in the health care setting: an exploratory study of factors underlying the selection and evaluation of primary medical services.

Recent policy initiatives in Australia have continued the debate concerning the appropriate model of health care for this country. A market economy model, predicated on the existence of true consumerism, has been promoted by influential organisations to replace the current system. To test the validity of this perception and to explore the level of consumerism which exists in the Australian health care setting, we undertook a cross-sectional survey of general practitioner attenders in the outer western and northern suburbs of Sydney. Three hundred and thirty-three patients from six general practices were polled over a two-week period in March 1990. Far from demonstrating consumerist behaviour (especially the considered selection and evaluation of services), the survey population was strongly attracted to the traditional model of medical care, which is characterised by the trusting and dependent relationship of patients with their doctors.

Australia↗