Annemarie Jutel

• Professor at Victoria University of Wellington

An updated second edition of the "Putting a Name to it" the seminal monograph about the sociology of diagnosis. This book reveals and introduces a social model of diagnosis which helps us to understand the importance of categories and classification in health, illness and disease.

In this retrospective reflection, sociologist of diagnosis Annemarie Jutel reflects on the progression of her academic thought vis-à-vis Drew Leder’s theories about bodily disappearance, highlighting the embodied nature of academic scholarship. In the same way that the body of the transcendent subject is not perceived, for it disappears in favor of...

This article is the written account of a discussion between a group of indigenous women (trained both in Western and Indigenous knowledge systems), on the relevance of diagnosis in their conceptualisations of health and illness.

The case of increasing diagnosis of autism illustrates both the grip of ‘diagnostic culture’ on our society, and the ‘sociology of diagnosis’. This is an emerging sub-field in sociology which draws attention to diagnosis as a site of medical authority, power and organisation. The sociological view is that diagnosis is not a simple label for a physi...

This illustrated essay describes the graphic diagnosis memoir as a form of illness narrative that uses a different way of telling stories than standard prose. A cartoon is broken into sequenced segments that ask the reader to jump across the gaps between the panels at the same time as they bridge the images and text assembled in each panel. To be s...

Diagnosis is a profoundly social phenomenon which, while putatively identifying disease entities, also provides insights into how societies understand and explain health, illness and deviance. In this paper, we explore how diagnosis becomes part of popular culture through its use in many non-clinical settings. From historical diagnosis of long-dece...

One common contemporary usage of the term "diagnostic uncertainty" is to refer to cases for which a diagnosis is not, or cannot, be applied to the presenting case. This is a paradoxical usage, as the absence of diagnosis is often as close to a certainty as can be a human judgement. What makes this sociologically interesting is that it represents an...

In this commentary, written in two bursts-the first completed in April 2020, and the second at the end of July-we explore how media metaphors of COVID-19 constitute the pandemic in Australia and New Zealand. We argue that the media's rhetorical strategies play an important role not only in describing the illness, but in influencing and shaping indi...

Abstract This short reply contests two assumptions made by the authors of Mayrhuber et al’s. “With fever it’s the real flu I would say.” The first is that there is influenza can be reliably defined by a medical case definition. The second is that this small qualitative study can be generalisable. However, it does underline the important point that...

While sociologists of medicine have focused their efforts on understanding human health, illness, and medicine, veterinary medical practice has not yet caught their attention in any sustained way. In this critical review article, we use insights from the sociology of diagnosis literature to explore veterinary practice, and aim to demonstrate the im...

Diagnosis is a pivotal tool for the work of medicine as they categorise and classify individual ailments via a generalised schema. However diagnosis is also a profoundly social act, which reflects society, its values and how it makes sense of illness and disease. Considering diagnosis critically, as well as practically, is an important job of the s...

New Zealand may face an influx of immigrants from Kiribati over the next few decades if climate change makes the country less habitable. Health professionals here should start preparing now.

Aims: Untreated sexually transmitted infections (STIs) can lead to serious health complications and may be transmitted to uninfected individuals. Therefore, the early detection and subsequent management of STIs is crucial to control efforts. Time to presentation for STI symptoms and risk of transmission in this period has not been assessed in New...

Objective: Untreated sexually transmitted infections (STIs) can lead to serious health complications, increase susceptibility to contracting further STIs including human immunodefiniceny virus (HIV), and can be transmitted to others. The early diagnosis and treatment of STIs is therefore central to comprehensive STI management and prevention, but...

Study objective: Although diagnosis is a valuable tool for health care providers, and often the reason patients say they are seeking care, it may not serve the same needs for patients as for providers. The objective of this study is to explore what patients specifically want addressed when seeking a diagnosis at their emergency department (ED) vis...

The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health offers the most comprehensive collection of theoretical and applied writings to date with which students, scholars, researchers and practitioners within the social and health sciences can systematically problematise the practices, priorities and knowledge base of the Western system of m...

Diagnosis is one of medicine’s most important tools. It structures the relationship between patient and diagnostician, organises illness and provides access to resources. In this article, I reveal how the manner in which a serious diagnosis is revealed creates a kind of ‘epistemic posture’ reinforcing the power of medical knowledge, and contributin...

Objective: To investigate the barriers that prevent or delay people seeking a sexually transmitted infection (STI) test. Methods: Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 university students, who are a group prone to behaviours putting them at risk of STIs, to understand the factors that had prevented or delayed them from going for...

Background: Contemporary medicine has expressed concern about lay incursions into the diagnostic process buttressed by commonly available medical information on line. Even while the world wide web is a new structure, there is a long historical precedent for this concern. With the emergence of scientific medicine in the late 19th century came a str...

The moment a serious diagnosis is announced creates an important crisis for a patient, as it shifts their sense of self and of their future potential. This essay discusses the creative representation and use of this diagnostic moment in film narratives. Using Still Alice, A Late Quartet, Wit and Cléo from 5 to 7 as examples, we describe how each of...

Anxiety about the proliferation and use of medical information by lay people has troubled doctors for more than a century. In 1898, Dr Gersuny, in his hints to doctors and patients, wrote: “Sick people who … have read up their complaint in some book, are a great source of trouble …

The moment at which a diagnosis is delivered to a patient, particularly when it is serious, is an important social moment. It not only dictates the clinical pathway, it also rewrites the patient narrative, shifts their identity, predicts potential outcomes, and foregrounds mortality. It may provide a sense of relief, or one of despair. Over time, a...

Management of alcohol withdrawal in critically ill patients is a challenge. The alcohol consumption histories of intensive care patients are often incomplete, limiting identification of patients with alcohol use disorders. Abrupt cessation of alcohol places these patients at risk for alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Typically benzodiazepines are used a...

The moment at which a person receives a life-threatening diagnosis is replete with drama. The life-altering impact of putting a name to disease preoccupies clinicians and social scientists, but also infuses creative work. This paper describes the use of the diagnostic moment in fiction. Using Ian McEwan’s Saturday, Anna Funder’s All That I Am, Arth...

It would be hard to imagine medical care without diagnosis, so pivotal is it to how Western medicine is practiced. Diagnosis is one of medicine’s principle tools, bringing with it as it does an explanation for what ails the sick person, an idea of what the treatment options might (or might not) be, a prognosis, and much more. It assigns responsibil...

Diagnoses are more than pathophysiological facts. They are simultaneously the product of social negotiation and a social structure that will shape future engagement with health, illness, and normality. That is to say, even in the presence of a material physical dysfunction, extensive social interaction must occur before the condition is granted dis...

The sociology of diagnosis offers a vantage point from which to study health and illness, linking a number of other threads of sociological thought. While there has been a growing interest in diagnosis since Mildred Blaxter's suggestion for a sociological exploration in 1978 – a call echoed by Brown in 1990 – it is timely to reflect upon the way in...

Background Recruiting individuals to take part in studies about sexual health can often be difficult due to the sensitive nature of the study topic. As a result, the sample may be less representative of the general population than desired. Understanding potential participants’ views, motivations and concerns may aid in the design of a recruitment p...

Background Sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates are known to be high in New Zealand, for example the incidence rate of Chlamydia is almost double that of Australia and the United Kingdom. If public awareness about STIs is low, including knowledge about transmission, risk factors, symptoms and treatment, this could be a contributing factor to...

More than 100,000 mobile phone software applications ('apps') have been designed for the dissemination of health and medical information and healthcare and public health initiatives. This article presents a critical analysis of self-diagnosis smartphone apps directed at lay people that were available on the Apple App Store and Google Play in mid-Ap...

An increasing number of smartphone and software applications (“apps”) have been developed and marketed to assist in the process of diagnosis, yet little attention has been paid to their content, claims, potential risks, limitations or benefits of their use. This study sought to describe and catalogue available diagnosis apps and explore their impac...

Presents a 55-word story about a doctor ruling out malignancy as the diagnosis for a red lump. Once the doctor names it, whatever that name might be, the patient will start breathing again. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

The medical model can perpetuate and itself be perpetuated --or be challenged and subverted –by stereotypical conceptions encountered on the Internet. In this rich case study of snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), we examine internet searching as a complex actor-network comprised of actors and actants such as the searchers themselves, searc...

Influenza is a common infectious disease, yet its diagnosis is rarely confirmed, rather is presumed in the presence of non-specific clinical symptoms. Public health organisations enlist the lay person in the diagnostic process, as infection containment initiatives focus on encouraging individuals with influenza-like illness to stay at home, seeking...

Diagnosis plays an important role in how we understand disease, and how medicine confirms its status in contemporary society. However, diagnoses are far less concrete than their taxonomies suggest. This essay presents influenza as a case study in the elusive nature of the diagnosis, and in its complicated realities. Using the metaphor of boundary t...

The education of medical students should be based on the best clinical information available, rather than on commercial interests. Previous research looking at university-wide conflict of interest (COI) policies used in Canadian medical schools has shown very poor regulation. An analysis of COI policies was undertaken to document the current policy...

Grading System for Categories in Policies. (DOCX)

There are two kinds of mountain bike crashes: those that take place at speed or involve large external objects; and those where the cyclist falls, usually at very low speed, and injures the part of the body used to stop the fall. My most recent crash was an example of the latter; my left thumb took the weight of my body as I tried to protect myself...

In an innovative group mentoring approach, four experienced midwives mentored four new graduates during their first year of practice. The new graduates were in practice as case-loading registered midwives having completed a three year Bachelor of Midwifery degree. Detailed data about the new graduates' concerns were collected throughout the year of...

Despite having reported influenza vaccination rates similar to New Zealand Europeans, Pacific peoples have significantly higher rates of infection, hospitalisation and intensive care unit admission than any other group in New Zealand. Much of this may be due to the presence of comorbidities. However, it is in the interest of Pacific health to promo...

Background Self-diagnosis of influenza is an important component of pandemic control and management as it may support self-management practices and reduce visits to healthcare facilities, thus helping contain viral spread. However, little is known about the accuracy of self-diagnosis of influenza, particularly during pandemics. Methods We used cro...

Over a decade after medical sociologist Phil Brown called for a sociology of diagnosis, Putting a Name to It provides the first book-length, comprehensive framework for this emerging subdiscipline of medical sociology. Diagnosis is central to medicine. It creates social order, explains illness, identifies treatments, and predicts outcomes. Using co...

Classification shapes medicine and guides its practice. Understanding classification must be part of the quest to better understand the social context and implications of diagnosis. Classifications are part of the human work that provides a foundation for the recognition and study of illness: deciding how the vast expanse of nature can be partition...

Medically unexplained symptoms are a source of frustration for clinician and patient alike. They simultaneously test the credibility of the doctor and the patient; the former, for his or her inability to label the patient's complaint, and the latter, for the ignominy of being perceived to have a factitious symptom. This review explores the discursi...

Disease classification is an important part in the process of medicalisation and one important tool by which medical authority is exerted. The demand for, or proposal of a diagnosis may be the first step in casting life's experiences as medical in nature. Aronowitz has written about how diagnoses result from social framing mechanisms (2008) and con...

JUTEL A. & MENKES D.B. (2010) Nurses' reported influence on the prescription and use of medication. International Nursing Review57, 92–97 Aim: To identify the activities senior nurses report undertaking that may influence the prescription and use of medicines. Background: While much attention has focused on the role of nurse prescribing, little is...

Most nurses, like their physician counterparts, lack education regarding pharmaceutical marketing strategies, and little is known of their beliefs and practices regarding this industry. Nurses are increasingly targeted by pharmaceutical companies as they become more involved in prescription and as policies restrict pharmaceutical companies' contact...

Purpose – This chapter presents a case for reframing medical sociology to focus on diagnosis as a pivotal category of analysis via an extended literature review of the diagnosis as a tool of medicine. Methodology/approach – Conceptual overview. Practical implications – By reviewing the range of social functions served by diagnosis, and the similarl...

Concern about commercial infl uences on health care is prominent in the medical literature, but has remained in the background of nursing education and practice. This review of the nursing literature explores the perspectives of the nursing community regarding pharmaceutical industry. This article presents a range of views, from favourable to highl...

Forces for modernisation appear to have led to role convergence and reduced social distances between doctors and modern patients. This review aims to document and understand this process in theory and practice, and to consider the implications for modern patients in particular but also non-modern patients and doctors. Narrative review of published...

This commentary shares my views of evidence-based nursing as a framework for practice, pointing out its limitations and identifying a wider base of appraisal tools required for making good clinical decisions. As the principles of evidence-based nursing take an increasingly greater hold on nursing education, policy and management, it is important to...

The nursing literature has yet to pay much attention to the expansive reach of the pharmaceutical industry into the nursing profession.

Evaluating health requires visual assessment. From the meticulous self-scrutiny of a worried woman in front of the looking glass to the doctor's reaction at the sight of a patient in the examining room, external appearance plays an important role in appraising health above and beyond clinical assessment. However, this dominance of the visual in our...

Forgetting Millie Sampson: Collective Frameworks for Historical Memory

As Charles Rosenberg [(2002). The tyranny of diagnosis. The Milbank Quarterly, 80, 237-260] has recently written, clinical diagnosis contributes to imposing structure on cultural reality in a manner which is not unproblematic. A social power resides in the process of naming diseases-one, which legitimises concerns, explains reality, naturalises dev...

Disease-mongering, or the medicalisation of aspects of daily life in an attempt to generate commercial profit for a party other than the person whose complaint is medicalised, is a newly recognized and legitimate source of concern for both consumers and deliverers of health care. The interest brought to this area by the academy has the potential to...

The medical, legal, and lay communities utilize a range of words to describe a pregnancy that does not result in live birth. These terms, including abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth, are more than just words: they carry with them a range of meanings and social consequences. This paper explores the complex implications embodied in the language u...

This article explores how a contemporary fixation with body fat and its containment takes its origins in historical sources. Despite the fact that the thin body has not always been the coveted norm, strong cultural beliefs about the significance of appearance provide a foundation for the preoccupation with calorie-counting, body sculpting, exercise...

The successful emergence of the women's marathon and its subsequent inclusion in the Olympic programme relied heavily upon reassuring the public that marathon running did not jeopardize the femininity of participants. Though protest and rebellion may have been an important part of the movement that resulted in recognition of the event, even the mil...

At the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympic Games, the tactics of German team riders reflected a commitment to professional rather than to national identity. This article explores how and why national identity in this event was subsumed by professional affiliations only to be reclaimed by the German press as evidence of national superiority. It also explores...

The medical community has long regarded obesity and overweight as serious health risks, and popular culture reflects these concerns. A focus on body weight reduction motivates many contemporary exercise and diet practices, especially among women. Yet, there is significant evidence that those risks have been exaggerated, that weight loss regimens ma...