IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v59y2004i7p1495-1503.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The expression of aversion to medicines in general practice consultations

Author

Listed:
  • Britten, Nicky
  • Stevenson, Fiona
  • Gafaranga, Joseph
  • Barry, Christine
  • Bradley, Colin

Abstract

Although the relevance of patients' views about medicines for their medicine taking behaviour is now well established, little is known about the ways in which these views are discussed in primary care consultations. In particular, many studies have demonstrated patients' aversion to medicines. This paper examines the form that aversion talk takes in the consultation and how doctors respond to patients' expression of aversion to medicines. It is based on a dataset of 35 case studies of general practice consultations in England. In interviews with researchers, aversion to medicines was expressed in 34 of the 35 cases. In consultations with doctors, aversion was expressed in 10 cases. The interactional dimension of aversion talk in consultations was analysed using Conversation Analysis, and two general patterns were identified. Aversion could be used as an interactional resource, or it could be a topic in its own right. If used as an interactional resource, no real discussion of patients' views of medicines took place. When aversion was a conversational topic in its own right, two situations were observed. Firstly, the doctor elicited patients' views directly. Secondly, patients initiated aversive talk using a range of indirect strategies to do so. Even when patients managed to express their aversion to medicines, doctors did not engage them in any real discussion of their views. A scheme of interpretation is suggested to explain these findings. In this scheme patients perceive medicines to be an extension of the doctor and to be beneficial. In this view it is right for doctors to prescribe medicines and for patients to take medicines. The results of this paper suggest that using aversion as an interactional resource might be the only safe way for patients to express their aversion without seeming to breach the social contract.

Suggested Citation

  • Britten, Nicky & Stevenson, Fiona & Gafaranga, Joseph & Barry, Christine & Bradley, Colin, 2004. "The expression of aversion to medicines in general practice consultations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(7), pages 1495-1503, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:7:p:1495-1503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00023-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ceuterick, Melissa & Van Ngoc, Pauline & Bracke, Piet & Scholtes, Beatrice, 2023. "From prescribing dilemma to knowledge in practice: The ontological politics of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 339(C).
    2. Stevenson, Fiona & Knudsen, Pia, 2008. "Discourses of agency and the search for the authentic self: The case of mood-modifying medicines," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 170-181, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:7:p:1495-1503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.