Version 1
: Received: 29 April 2024 / Approved: 29 April 2024 / Online: 29 April 2024 (10:33:17 CEST)
How to cite:
Consorti, F.; Melcarne, R.; Pisanelli, D.; Scorziello, C.; Giacomelli, L. What Is a Disease for Doctors? A Realist Thematic Analysis and Implications for Medical Education. Preprints2024, 2024041908. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1908.v1
Consorti, F.; Melcarne, R.; Pisanelli, D.; Scorziello, C.; Giacomelli, L. What Is a Disease for Doctors? A Realist Thematic Analysis and Implications for Medical Education. Preprints 2024, 2024041908. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1908.v1
Consorti, F.; Melcarne, R.; Pisanelli, D.; Scorziello, C.; Giacomelli, L. What Is a Disease for Doctors? A Realist Thematic Analysis and Implications for Medical Education. Preprints2024, 2024041908. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1908.v1
APA Style
Consorti, F., Melcarne, R., Pisanelli, D., Scorziello, C., & Giacomelli, L. (2024). What Is a Disease for Doctors? A Realist Thematic Analysis and Implications for Medical Education. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1908.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Consorti, F., Chiara Scorziello and Laura Giacomelli. 2024 "What Is a Disease for Doctors? A Realist Thematic Analysis and Implications for Medical Education" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1908.v1
Abstract
Given the long-standing debate about the nature of the concept of disease, the objective of this study was to understand how doctors categorize a condition as a disease or not and what kind of information they use. A survey with a set of clinical vignettes was designed, and a group of physicians were asked to interpret those situations as a disease or not and to motivate their choice with a short written text. Thematic analysis of the answers resulted in four themes: the temporal dimension of a disease, reification of disease, disease as an existential condition, and disease as a motivation to action. The respondents’ interpretations were very heterogeneous, supporting the idea that physicians do not share a common prototypical concept of disease. An interpretation of these results according to a critical realist and systemic approach suggested that the doctor-patient relationship is the context able to influence the interpretation of a condition as a disease or not as the final outcome of a process in which both objective, subjective, and socially mediated elements are taken into consideration.
Keywords
disease; illness; philosophy of medicine; critical realism
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Clinical Medicine
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
