SOCIOL 1101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Sick Role, Critical Role, Medicalization
13 Jul 2016
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The rise (and fall?) of the medical profession. There are occupational battles over who can prescribe what and who can perform which procedures: medicalization- the process by which problems or issues not traditionally seen as medical come to be framed as such (ex. Alcoholism: often, doctors play the critical role of expert witnesses in court cases, testifying whether a defendant is mentally competent to know the difference between right and wrong and whether he or she is fit to stand trial. The rise of the biomedical culture: medical professionals currently hold a great deal of power, but that hasn"t always been the case. By 1990 or so, doctors" authority began to decline for several reasons: market forces had infiltrated medicine. Concerns about the rising cost of health care had become a major political issue and led to changes in the way we pay for care, such as through health maintenance organizations (hmos)
