W STRONĘ SOCJOLOGII DIAGNOZY. SPOŁECZNE FUNKCJE DIAGNOZY MEDYCZNEJ W KONTEKŚCIE DOŚWIADCZENIA CHOROBY
TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF DIAGNOSIS. THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ILLNESS EXPERIENCE

Summary/Abstract: The subject of analysis are the social functions of medical diagnosis, taking into account the ways of how diagnosis shapes the models of the experience of chronic illness, including functional health disorders (Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms). The theoretical framework of this analysis is phenomenological sociology and the achievements gained as a result of its application in the field of the sociology of illness experience. This analysis complements the achievements of the sociology of medical knowledge, which point to medical diagnosis as a construct emerging at the meeting point of individual experience and biological, political, economic and especially social reality. The construct is therefore the result of a number of influences going beyond medicine. The present analysis emphasizes that the application of diagnosis to a specific patient is not only a clinical act of crucial importance in medical science and art, but also a social one, which, with the growing role of patients in medical care as subjects of rights, increasingly often becomes “a product” of social interactions and negotiations taking place in their course. This act has not only clinical but also social consequences, inter alia in modeling the ways of experiencing illness, in structuralizing the patient’s contacts with the medical system, or in the virtual collectivization of illness experience. The goal of the study is to start and dynamize scientific discussion on the cognitive identity of the new branch of medical sociology: the sociology of diagnosis.

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