In this case study, I have chosen to discuss an act of volunteerism at my local hospital, where I have been a volunteer for over five years. In this role, I socialize with a patient battling Multiple Sclerosis (MS), progressive to a state rendering her non-verbal, immobile, and a long term resident of the palliative care ward. This patient is wholly dependent on medical staff for basic daily needs and biological survival. I argue that the concept of the “gaze” has become embedded within the relationship between medical staff, specifically nurses, and the patient, which allows power differentials to become manifest within this relationship.
Coined by Michel Foucault (1963), the “clinical gaze” (commonly known as the “gaze”) is defined as an …show more content…
For the patient discussed in this essay, political circumstances greatly effect her health. Physically connected to state medical care through medical equipment, as well as socially through living in an environment primarily funded by the state, she is left vulnerable to changes or cuts in medical funding and policy (Hamdy 2008:556). Decrease in government funding that causes staff lay-offs or less funding for medication could mean a grim decrease in quality of care for this patient. Healthcare is a key topic raised by political parties during elections, and the appointment of a leader into power who proposes neoliberal-esque healthcare reform could become a serious political determinant of her health. Hence it is clear why this patient’s civic voice should not have been silenced. To have the power to dismiss this crucial sociopolitical dynamic of the patient’s reality and structure her life as acontextual, or merely biological, is to deny the patient a full realization of her personhood, which signals an extreme power imbalance. Thus, nurses must go beyond acontextuality, to begin to understand the political and social context this patient finds herself in (Holmes …show more content…
Pierre Bourdieu states that “being is being perceived,” or simpler, that “each person is defined by the perceptions of others” (Holmes 2011:879). In concerning herself only with the biological context of the patient’s health, and refusing to consider the importance of the patient’s wider political context, the nurse perceived her as unqualified and incapable, due to the severity of her disease, for participation in the political sphere. Her haughty claims reek of a perception viewing the patient’s body as too medically incapacitated, or her localized disease too powerful, to have any significant political reality. As Bourdieu’s quote suggests, the nurse’s clinical perception of the patient provided her the great power to define the patient as a severely diseased and disabled body. The dire implications of this power (via perception) to define the patient was that the nurse now held the authority to “shape the possible actions of the other person herself [the patient], and - in this dialogic process - produce the material conditions in which she lives” (Holmes
Coined by Michel Foucault (1963), the “clinical gaze” (commonly known as the “gaze”) is defined as an …show more content…
For the patient discussed in this essay, political circumstances greatly effect her health. Physically connected to state medical care through medical equipment, as well as socially through living in an environment primarily funded by the state, she is left vulnerable to changes or cuts in medical funding and policy (Hamdy 2008:556). Decrease in government funding that causes staff lay-offs or less funding for medication could mean a grim decrease in quality of care for this patient. Healthcare is a key topic raised by political parties during elections, and the appointment of a leader into power who proposes neoliberal-esque healthcare reform could become a serious political determinant of her health. Hence it is clear why this patient’s civic voice should not have been silenced. To have the power to dismiss this crucial sociopolitical dynamic of the patient’s reality and structure her life as acontextual, or merely biological, is to deny the patient a full realization of her personhood, which signals an extreme power imbalance. Thus, nurses must go beyond acontextuality, to begin to understand the political and social context this patient finds herself in (Holmes …show more content…
Pierre Bourdieu states that “being is being perceived,” or simpler, that “each person is defined by the perceptions of others” (Holmes 2011:879). In concerning herself only with the biological context of the patient’s health, and refusing to consider the importance of the patient’s wider political context, the nurse perceived her as unqualified and incapable, due to the severity of her disease, for participation in the political sphere. Her haughty claims reek of a perception viewing the patient’s body as too medically incapacitated, or her localized disease too powerful, to have any significant political reality. As Bourdieu’s quote suggests, the nurse’s clinical perception of the patient provided her the great power to define the patient as a severely diseased and disabled body. The dire implications of this power (via perception) to define the patient was that the nurse now held the authority to “shape the possible actions of the other person herself [the patient], and - in this dialogic process - produce the material conditions in which she lives” (Holmes