Professionalism lapses and hierarchies: A qualitative analysis of medical students' narrated acts of resistance

Publication date: December 2018Source: Social Science & Medicine, Volume 219Author(s): Malissa Kay Shaw, Charlotte E. Rees, Nina Bjerre Andersen, Lori Faye Black, Lynn V. MonrouxeAbstractResistance is classified as a reaction against confining social structures. During their education, medical students encounter traditional medical and interprofessional hierarchies as they learn to become doctors. These create a power disparity that may prevent their empowerment and ability to resist. Despite their subordinate position, students are not always powerless when encountering situations that contradict their ethical, moral, and professional understandings of appropriate medical practice – so called ‘professionalism dilemmas.’ A qualitative analysis of over 1500 narratives from interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires with 808 medical students in the UK and Australia highlights how students draw on a number of direct and indirect, verbal and bodily, instantaneous and delayed forms of resistance to counter the professionalism lapses of their seniors, which they face in everyday clinical and educational interactions. Within students' narratives of resistance we come to see how they resist hegemonic practices and their reasons for doing so, such as to prevent patient and student abuse, promote hygienic practice, and uphold patient consent. Through these various acts of resistance (and their narration), medical students may promote the subtle transformation of the dominant me...
Source: Social Science and Medicine - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research