Troublesome Patients as Experienced by Doctors in Japan

Since roughly around the start of the current millenium, there has been a growing trend of doctors and pharmacists in Japan speaking up about what they perceive to be unreasonable attitudes and behaviours exhibited by patients and the media towards medical experts who work in clinical situations. One example of a clinical discourse in Japan that has been particularly concerned with this issue is one dubbed 'iryo hokai'. The main thrust of the argument made by medical caregivers who speak within this discourse is that current-day patients' unachievably high expectations of doctors' ability to successfully cure disease is leading to an increase in malpractice lawsuits, and that this will encourage doctors to abandon their work out of fear for being sued, eventually causing modern medicine to collapse due to understaffing. This paper aims to perform a discourse analysis on the concrete expressions of such professional frustration, specifically using articles published in commercial...Show moreSince roughly around the start of the current millenium, there has been a growing trend of doctors and pharmacists in Japan speaking up about what they perceive to be unreasonable attitudes and behaviours exhibited by patients and the media towards medical experts who work in clinical situations. One example of a clinical discourse in Japan that has been particularly concerned with this issue is one dubbed 'iryo hokai'. The main thrust of the argument made by medical caregivers who speak within this discourse is that current-day patients' unachievably high expectations of doctors' ability to successfully cure disease is leading to an increase in malpractice lawsuits, and that this will encourage doctors to abandon their work out of fear for being sued, eventually causing modern medicine to collapse due to understaffing. This paper aims to perform a discourse analysis on the concrete expressions of such professional frustration, specifically using articles published in commercial magazines aimed at a professional readership to examine doctors' lived experience with patients that they deem 'troublesome'. As a background for discussion it also presents a short history of the relevant issues as they have developed over roughly the past two decades. The analysis itself is informed by existing social theory on the configurations and functions of power in modern society, especially as it pertains to professionalized biomedicine and its role in creating and administrating populations.Show less

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Troublesome Patients as Experienced by Doctors in Japan