AIDS and Its Impact on Medical Work: The Culture and Politics of the Shop Floor

AIDS, together with other institutional factors, is changing the "shop-floor" culture of house officers and students in urban, academic medical centers. These medical workers complained of powerlessness and exploitation prior to the epidemic, but they felt pride in scoring clinical coups and chagrin in their clinical defeats, characteristic of an adolescent sense of invulnerability. The HIV epidemic, dovetailing with the intensely competitive economic environment in medical settings, subjects house officers to increasingly demanding schedules, heightens their sense of powerlessness, and limits their sense of professional achievement. Fear of contagion, moreover, is erasing their perception of invulnerability.

Author(s): Charles L. Bosk; Joel E. Frader

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Volume 68, Issue S2 (pages 257–279)
Published in 1990