2002 Roy Porter memonial prize essay therapeutic infidelities: 'Noncompliance' enters the

Author:Greene, JA

Article Title:2002 Roy Porter memonial prize essay therapeutic infidelities: 'Noncompliance' enters the medical literature, 1955-1975

Abstract:
Although a concern with patients who do not follow their prescribed therapies can be found in Hippocratic writings, the description of a patient as specifically 'noncompliant' did not rise to prominence in the Anglo-American medical literature until the late twentieth century. This article surveys the nascent noncompliance literature in the post-Second World War era to ask how and why the noncompliant patient become a resonant category and research priority at that time. In varying accounts, attention to 'noncompliance' developed as a logical result of the mid-century epidemiology transition, the growth of better screening techniques, and an effective pharmacopoeia for chronic disease, as an ideology of social control, or as a means for younger, sociologically-trained physicians to critique older forms of medical authority In fashioning 'noncompliance' as a subject in the 1960s and 1970s, many researchers believed they had discovered an objective and value-neutral method of inquiry that would address questions central to enhancing the efficiency, of clinical practice. Although the category has only grown in importance in recent decades as a central component of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis control efforts, a residue of stigma and culpability still adheres to the term in common usage.

Keywords: noncompliance; non-adherence; doctor-patient relationship; therapeutics; treatment failure; pharmaceuticals; chronic disease; epidemiology; twentieth century

DOI: 10.1093/shm/17.3.327

Source:SOCIAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE

Welcome to correct the error, please contact email: humanisticspider@gmail.com