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CONSTRUCTION AND PRACTICE OF MEDICAL RESPONSIBILITY: DILEMMAS AND NARRATIVES FROM GERIATRICS

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Abstract

A narrative approach is employed in this article about dilemmasand physician reasoning in geriatric medicine in order toexplore the moral-medical worlds of urban American physicians.Reconstructed dilemmas, in the form of stories told by 51doctors, are analyzed as cultural documents of both clinical-moralknowledge and practice and the physician as moral actor. Discussionfocuses on ways in which responsibility is constituted and enactedthrough a particular language of clinical action. This analysisopens the subject of bioethics to a range of infrequently discussedissues that physicians cite as deeply troubling and contributesto a broadening of anthropological approaches useful in the studyof bioethics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Division of Medical Anthropology, University of California, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA

    SHARON R. KAUFMAN

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KAUFMAN, S.R. CONSTRUCTION AND PRACTICE OF MEDICAL RESPONSIBILITY: DILEMMAS AND NARRATIVES FROM GERIATRICS. Cult Med Psychiatry 21, 1–26 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005345716123

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005345716123