Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Strauss, Anselm L
• Fagerhaugh, Shizuko
• Suczek, Barbara
• Wiener, Carolyn

Titel

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF MEDICAL WORK

Erscheinungsjahr

1997

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Sociological Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This reprint, with a new Introduction to the Transaction Edition by Strauss, examines organizational structure of medical care in the new era of technologies that are capable of developing long-term managed care for incurable illnesses. Drawing on case studies, the illness trajectory is defined as the organization of work done over the course of illness plus the impact on those involved with that work & its organization. Though different illnesses will have different trajectories, all include some form of comfort work, clinical safety work, machine work, composure, biographical & other kinds of psychological work, plus the work of coordinating tasks. Different illnesses require different ways of organizing resources to facilitate & manage the illness trajectory. It is suggested that the kinds of work involved in illness trajectories raise a number of issues, including mistakes at work; the nature of information & body work; the role of clients in the illness trajectory; teamwork in organizational contexts; negotiative work; division of labor; temporal order & matrix; industries & interorganizational transactions; & the role of a sociology of work in these contexts. It is concluded that the notion of illness trajectory & how it is organized in a division of tasks & work spaces may be an appropriate model for conceiving of work in a variety of contexts. A Preface accompanies 10 Chpts. 1 Appendix, 122 References. D. M. Smith