Silent subjects, loud diseases Enactment of personhood in intensive care

• Published in: Health (London, England : 1997) Vol. 20; no. 2; pp. 127 - 142
• Main Author: Koksvik, Gitte Hanssen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England Sage Publications, Ltd 01.03.2016; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Anthropology, Cultural; Critical Care - methods; Disease; Ethnography; Europe; Fieldwork; Humans; Intensive Care Units; Interviews as Topic; Nurses; Nursing Staff, Hospital - psychology; Patients; Personhood; Physicians; Technology; Technology Assessment, Biomedical - methods; Unconsciousness - psychology; France; Norway; Spain; intensive care unit; enactment; intensive care; personhood; medical technology
• ISSN: 1363-4593; 1461-7196; 1461-7196
• DOI: 10.1177/1363459314567792

The topic of this article is personhood in the case of verbally inexpressive, typically unconscious patients or patients with a low level of lucidity. My aim is to show how personhood is done and undone in a close-knit network of personnel, patients, disease, technology, and treatment, borrowing the concept of enactment as developed by Annemarie Mol. The empirical data are based on grounded ethnographic fieldwork conducted in three separate intensive care units in three European countries: Spain, Norway, and France in the spring of 2014. Four weeks were spent at each site. The method used was participant observations and semi-structured interviews with 24 intensive care unit staff members (9 doctors, 12 nurses, and 3 nurses’ aides).