 | Supriya Subramani Anthropology, Bioethics - Medical ethics, Philosophy |
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01.02.2023-29.03.2023
The Passive Patient: Exploring the Culture of (Dis)respect in Indian Medical Law and Clinical Practice
This stay will allow me to finish a working draft of my book. In this monograph, I aim to explore how healthcare and judicial institutions perceive patients and illustrate the underlying archetype of the patient. My goal is to challenge the notion of an ‘active patient’ that is taken for granted in discussions of healthcare ethics, especially those involving patient autonomy and patient-centered care debates. Additionally, it seeks to demonstrate how in medicine and law discourses in the Indian context, the idea of 'passive patient' is actively promoted. Through narratives I will demonstrate how patients are prejudicially viewed as “passive, ignorant, uneducated, poor, incompetent, and arrogant ”. By exploring micro-inequities (little acts of disrespect), moral habitus, and other structural discriminations, I argue that vulnerable and marginalized patients are being treated with moral and epistemic disrespect. Patients and family members are marginalized and not acknowledged during clinical interactions, as they are deemed to be “cognitively deficient and lacking in social and economic status”. I aim to highlight the relevance of understanding the archetype of the patient in theory and practice in making sense of injustice in healthcare research and ethics debates, and asserting that oftentimes injustice is accompanied by or implies a lack of moral recognition of patients and their embodied disrespectful experiences.
My research interests lie at the intersection of moral emotions, healthcare ethics and behaviour. My research is concerned with how emotions, moral epistemology and everyday interactions influence us; and how power is negotiated and challenged by individuals in interpersonal and institutional cultures. I employ qualitative methodology to explore the moral subjectivities of individuals. For full papers/preprints: www.supriyasubramani.com
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