Life in the Hospital: A Review

The ethnographic study of hospitalized patients' social worlds and individual experience, a once flourishing research tradition, has now largely vanished from the literature of social science. The disappearance of this tradition is accounted for by changes in the character of hospitals-decreasing lengths of stay, expansion of specialized units, and medicine's increased technical sophistication-that have weakened patients' social worlds and, perhaps, made patients' experience less consequential for health outcomes. If the ethnographic study of hospital patients is revitalized, it will take shape around a view of the patient as a newly empowered participant in decision-making processes.

Author(s): Robert Zussman

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Volume 71, Issue 1 (pages 167–185)
Published in 1993