ArticleSociology of health & illness2020
The convivial and the pastoral in patient-doctor relationships: a multi-country study of patient stories of care, choice and medical authority in cancer diagnostic processes.
Article in Sociology of health & illness, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Clinicians' Perception and Management of Cancer Patients' Decision Making Burden.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Cancer Patients' Experiences of Burden when Involved in Treatment Decision Making.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2025Article
- Pandemic delay: social implications and challenges for palliative care.Palliative care and social practice · 2023Article
- From loyalty to resignation: Patient-doctor figurations in type 1 diabetes.Sociology of health & illness · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Experiences of cancer diagnosis are changing in light of both the increasingly technological-clinical diagnostic processes and the socio-political context in which interpersonal relations take place. This has raised questions about how we might understand patient-doctor relationship marked by asymmetries of knowledge and social capital, but that emphasise patients' empowered choices and individualised care. As part of an interview study of 155 participants with bowel or lung cancer across Denmark, England and Sweden, we explored participants' stories of the decisions made during their cancer diagnostic process. By focusing on the intersections of care, choice and medical authority - a convivial pastoral dynamic - we provide a conceptual analysis of the normative ambivalences in people's stories of their cancer diagnosis. We found that participants drew from care, choice and medical authority to emphasise their relationality and interdependence with their doctors in their stories of their diagnosis. Importantly negotiations of an asymmetrical patient-doctor relationship were part of an on-going realisation of the healthcare processes as a human endeavour. We were therefore able to draw attention to the limitations of dichotomising emancipatory-empowerment discourses and argue for a theorisation of the patient-doctor relationship as a contextually bounded and relationally ambivalent humanity.
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Registered trials
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