Sick Healers
Chronic Affliction and the Authority of Experience at an Ethiopian Hospital
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2258560 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anita Hannig (0000-0003-4733-0392, Department of Anthropology Brandeis University Waltham MA 02453, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 117 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 640-651 |
| Publication date | 2015-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Anthropologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/aman.12337 |
| OpenAlex | W1926128362 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 31 |
At fistula hospitals in Ethiopia, patients who are not cured of their incontinence are hired as "nurse aides" to perform essential nursing duties in the ward and operating theater. An array of tensions surrounds the work of these women, tensions that are emblematic of their chronic-but secret-patient status. If accidentally disclosed, the women's ongoing illness episodes sabotage their ability to administer treatment, such as injections. In contrast to classic anthropological accounts of wounded healers and therapeutic narratives about the virtues of experience-based care, I argue in this article that illness experience can also have a profoundly delegitimizing effect. Rather than attributing these dynamics to the alleged stigma that surrounds obstetric fistula sufferers, I delineate the various challenges to clinical authority that are epitomized by the figure of the sick healer. Nurse aides' experiences with obstetric fistula proved to be a liability precisely because these experiences had not been resolved. Their chronic injuries raised questions both about their medical training and the efficacy of surgery. Attending to these Ethiopian health practitioners can hone our grasp of the professional dilemmas posed by chronic afflictions and contribute to our understanding of available ideologies at play in the global practice of biomedicine. [chronic illness, experience, healing, obstetric fistula, Ethiopia
Duty · Health care · Ideology · Narrative · Political science · Global Maternal and Child Health · Law · Medicine · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Identity, and Health · Nursing
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A Heart for the Work
Biomedicine in an Unstable Place
The Republic of Therapy
Improvising Medicine
The Logic of Care
Chronic Conditions, Fluid States
Death Without Weeping
The Forest of Symbols
Marxist modern
Speaking with Vampires
The Pastoral Clinic
Tracking the rise of the “expert patient” in evolving paradigms of HIV care
Social Stratification in Africa
Concealment tactics among HIV-positive nurses in Uganda
A Colonial Lexicon
The concept of therapeutic 'emplotment
The Pure and the Pious
Those Who Play with Fire
Vertical Love
Tactility and Distraction
Stigma, liminality, and chronic pain
If she's a vegetable, we'll be her garden
Why Amhara get kureynya
Sick Healers
The Adopted Children of ART
| Citations per year | 0.27 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2024 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |