The Invisible Work of Being a Patient and Implications for Health Care
[The Doctor Is] My Business Partner in the Most Important Business in My Life, Staying Alive
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5948100 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kenton T Unruh, Wanda Pratt (0000-0003-4035-0198) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 2008 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 40-50 |
| Publication date | 2008-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (CONFERENCE) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1559-890X • E-ISSN: 1559-8918 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1559-8918.2008.tb00093.x |
| PMID | 21709742 |
| PMCID | PMC3123251 |
| OpenAlex | W2029984336 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 10 |
In a distributed system of care, patients shuffle among many clinicians and spend the majority of their time away from the treatment center. Although we see the results of patients' work (e.g., medication taken, arrived at appointment) we do not see the work itself. By failing to see this work, industry overlooks issues with vital implications for their business. To lift the veil of invisibility from patients' work, we conducted a longitudinal field study to uncover the invisible work breast cancer patients do to obtain information, bridge interinstitutional care, manage dependencies and resolve inconsistent recommendations. In this paper we provide detailed examples of this work and explore the impact on patients and health-care operations; identify patterns of work with implications for patient-centered research and design; and propose common information spaces to improve patients' work through designs that highlight dependencies, preserve state information, link recommendations to justifications, and track task progress
Business · Health care · Political science · Work (physics · Empathy and Medical Education · Engineering · Medicine · Nursing · Patient Satisfaction in Healthcare · Patient-Provider Communication in Healthcare · Psychology · Mechanical Engineering
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Tactics of material participation
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After encounters
Homemade
The use of PrEP among men who have sex with men and transgender women as Biomedical Prevention Work
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Trying to Make Things Right
Mechanisms of invisibility
| Citations per year | 1.08 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2026 (14) |
| Highly cited | No |