Health States of Exception: unsafe non‐care and the (inadvertent) production of ‘bare life’ in complex care transitions

This paper draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben to understand how the social organisation of care transitions can reduce people to their ‘bare’ life thereby making harmful and degrading treatment seemingly legitimate. The findings of a 2‐year ethnographic study show how some people experience hospit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSociology of health & illness Vol. 42; no. 1; pp. 171 - 190
Main Authors Waring, Justin, Bishop, Simon
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.01.2020
Subjects
agamben
Anthropology, Cultural
bio‐power
Care plans
care transitions
Delayed
Delivery of Health Care
Discharge
Health services
homo sacer
hospital discharge
Hospitals
Humans
Life transitions
Modes of production
neglect
Patient Discharge
Patient Safety
Patient Transfer
Unsafe
agamben
patient safety
hospital discharge
care transitions
homo sacer
bio-power
neglect
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Summary:This paper draws on the work of Giorgio Agamben to understand how the social organisation of care transitions can reduce people to their ‘bare’ life thereby making harmful and degrading treatment seemingly legitimate. The findings of a 2‐year ethnographic study show how some people experience hospital discharge as undignified, inhumane and unsafe process, expressed through their lack of involvement in care planning, delayed discharge from hospital and poorly coordinated care. Our analysis explores how these experiences stem from the way patients are constituted as ‘unknown’ and ‘ineligible’ subjects and, in turn, how professionals become ‘not responsible’ for their care. The result being that the person is reduced to their ‘bare’ life with limited value within the care system. We suggest that the social production of ‘bare life’ is an inadvertent consequence of reconciling and aligning multiple disciplines within a complex care system.
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ISSN:0141-9889
1467-9566
1467-9566
DOI:10.1111/1467-9566.12993