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Complexities of Participation: Education and Authority in Primary Care Patient-Provider Interactions in the age of the Internet

This thesis is about primary care medicine in the United States today. Specifically, I look into primary care providers’ experiences working with patients in the context of the public’s current access to extensive health and medical information online. In this thesis, I discuss and analyze my conversations with physicians, nurse practitioners, and a physicians’ assistant about their objectives in primary care, the challenges they face, and their perceptions of patients’ ability to seek out information on their own. I explore providers’ educational emphasis in primary care consultations, and argue that this focus on education informs their views of patients’ independent research and involvement in care. I further argue that regardless of my informants’ enthusiasm about patient involvement and the merits of patient-education, these providers still hold and express a strong authority over medical knowledge and decisions. Thus in looking at the influence of what could be seen as a democratization of medical knowledge through public access and the Internet, it seems that the limitations of such access are still great in U.S. medical practice.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:scripps_theses-1071
Date20 April 2012
CreatorsShackelford, Katya A.
PublisherScholarship @ Claremont
Source SetsClaremont Colleges
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceScripps Senior Theses
Rights© 2012 Katya A. Shackelford

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