IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v60y2005i5p1099-1106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"What sort of health promotion are you talking about?": a discourse analysis of the talk of general practitioners

Author

Listed:
  • McKinlay, Eileen
  • Plumridge, Libby
  • McBain, Lynn
  • McLeod, Deborah
  • Pullon, Susan
  • Brown, Selina

Abstract

In New Zealand, health promotion is now expected to be an integral part of the work of a general practitioner, and in the recently implemented New Zealand Primary Health Organisation structure, specific funding is available to undertake health promotion activities in primary care. Eighteen general practitioners recruited to take part in two focus groups discussing men's health, talked extensively about health promotion. This talk was analysed through a discourse analysis. This study of the 'talk' of general practitioners suggests that there are problems in transferring the concept, which must be recognised and addressed if health promotion is going to be taken up effectively within general practice. The meaning given to health promotion in the consultation is unclear and general practitioners were unsure about its value in 'health checks' and screening. Lack of time and lack of confidence in the evidence appeared to be barriers to undertaking health promotion within general practice consultations. In the current climate general practitioners are uncertain, to the point of ambivalence, about health promotion in their work. Further work will be required to ensure this ambivalence does not result in covert resistance.

Suggested Citation

  • McKinlay, Eileen & Plumridge, Libby & McBain, Lynn & McLeod, Deborah & Pullon, Susan & Brown, Selina, 2005. ""What sort of health promotion are you talking about?": a discourse analysis of the talk of general practitioners," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 1099-1106, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:5:p:1099-1106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00327-2
    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. Mitchell, Penelope Fay, 2009. "A discourse analysis on how service providers in non-medical primary health and social care services understand their roles in mental health care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1213-1220, April.

    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:60:y:2005:i:5:p:1099-1106. 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.