Keeping out and getting in

Reframing Emergency Department Gatekeeping as Structural Competence

Bibliographic Data

ID2249268
AuthorsM Buchbinder (0000-0002-2319-662X, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume39
Issue7
Pages1166-1179
Publication date2017-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9566.12566
PMID28422296
OpenAlexW2606824466
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited37

Sociologists have tended to frame medical gatekeeping as an exclusionary social practice, delineating how practitioners and clerical staff police the moral boundaries of medicine by keeping out patients who are categorised as 'bad', 'deviant', or otherwise problematic. Yet medical gatekeeping, understood more broadly, can include not only keeping patients out of particular clinical settings, but also redirecting them to alternative sources of care. In this article, I draw on qualitative analysis of audio-recorded patient-provider interactions in a United States emergency department (ED) to illustrate medical gatekeeping as a two-step process of, first, categorising certain patient complaints as unsuitable for treatment within a particular setting, and second, diverting patients to alternative sites for care. I refer to these as the restrictive and facilitative components of medical gatekeeping to denote how each relates to patients' access to care, recognising that both components of medical gatekeeping are part of a coordinated organisational strategy for managing resource scarcity. By illustrating how ED providers reveal intimate knowledge of structural vulnerabilities in diverting socioeconomically disadvantaged patients with chronic back pain to clinical sites that are better equipped to provide care, I suggest that we rethink the emphasis on restrictive practices in sociological accounts of medical gatekeeping

Advertising · Business · Cognitive reframing · Competence (human resources · Emergency department · Gatekeeping · Emergency and Acute Care Studies · Hospital Admissions and Outcomes · Medical Malpractice and Liability Issues · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Social Psychology