A colonized general practice? A critical habermasian analysis of how general practitioners experience defensive medicine in their everyday working life
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4744978 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elisabeth Assing Hvidt (0000-0003-3762-8478, University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author), Line Bjørnskov Pedersen (0000-0001-6804-2045, University of Southern Denmark), Jesper Lykkegaard (0000-0001-9128-6136, University of Southern Denmark), Kurt Moller Pedersen (0000-0002-8222-0781, University of Southern Denmark), Kjeld Moller Pedersen, Merethe Kirstine Kousgaard Andersen (0000-0002-4833-1867, University of Southern Denmark), Merethe Kousgaard Andersen (University of Southern Denmark) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 141-158 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1363459319857461 |
| PMID | 31216878 |
| OpenAlex | W2953130480 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 31 |
The aim of this article is to show how Jürgen Habermas' communicative action theory serves as a useful tool in analysing and interpreting empirical data on how Danish general practitioners experience defensive medicine in their everyday working life. Through six qualitative focus group interviews with a total of 28 general practitioners (14 men and 14 women), the general practitioners' understandings of and experiences with defensive medicine were unfolded and discussed. Traditionally, defensive medicine is understood as physicians' deviation from sound medical practice due to fears of liability claims or lawsuits. In this study, however, a broader understanding of defensive medicine emerged as unnecessary medical actions that are more substantiated by feelings of demands and pressures than meaningful clinical behaviour. As a first analytical step, the data are contextualized drawing on the medical sociological literature that has theorized recent changes within primary health care such as regulation, audit, standardization and consumerism. Using Habermas' theorization to further interpret the general practitioners' experiences, we argue that central areas of the general practitioners' clinical everyday work life can be seen as having become subject to the habermasian social and political processes of 'strategic action' and 'colonization'. It is furthermore shown that the general practitioners share an impulse to resist these colonizing processes, hereby pointing to a need for challenging the increasingly defensive medical culture that seems to pervade the organization of general practice today
Epistemology · Everyday life · Family medicine · General practice · Sociology · Working life · Ethics in medical practice · Healthcare cost, quality, practices · Medical Malpractice and Liability Issues · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology
Focus Group Methodology
The End of the Golden Age of Doctoring
On defensive decision making
Habermas, Critical Theory, and Health
From Embodied to Disembodied Professionalism? Discussing the Implications of Medico‐Managerial Management in Welfare Service Work
Maintaining Professional Identity
From a relationship to encounter
Defensive medicine during hospital obstetrical care
Sample Size in Qualitative Interview Studies
When there is no doctor
Evaluating the Medical Malpractice System and Options for Reform
Beyond decline
How Physician-Employees Experience Their Work Lives in a Changing HMO
Adapting, Resisting, and Negotiating
Regulating medical bodies? The consequences of the 'modernisation' of the NHS and the disembodiment of clinical knowledge
New Labour, Modernisation and the Medical Labour Process
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |