Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:39:08.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Improving the Doctor/Patient Relationship: A Feminist Perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Peggy Foster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the early 1970s British and American feminists have developed a comprehensive critique of the dominant doctor/patient relationship within mainstream health care services. In Britain, activists in the women's health movement have struggled to put into practice a model of health care delivery based on feminist principles, within which the doctor/patient relationship is radically redesigned. This paper will explore the principles and practice of this feminist health care model. It will then attempt to evaluate alternative strategies for strengthening and expanding feminist health care within the NHS. The paper will draw on data gathered by the author in 1987 through a series of unstructured interviews with feminist health care providers who were working within a variety of NHS settings in the North West of England.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 337 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aitken-Swan, J. (1977), Fertility Control and the Medical Profession, Croom Helm. London.Google Scholar
Allen, I. (1988), Any Room at the Top? A Study of Doctors and Their Careers, Policy Studies Institute, London.Google Scholar
Barrett, M. and Roberts, H. (1978), ‘Doctors and their patients: the social control of women in general practice’, in Smart, C. and Smart, B. (eds). Women's Sexuality and Social Control, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Bieggs, A. (1979), ‘A pig in a poke’, Scarlet Women, No. 10, 12 8–9.Google Scholar
British Medical Journal (1984), Vol. 289, No. 6456, 1468–1469.Google Scholar
Cm 249, Providing Better Health: The Government's Programme for Improving Primary Health Care, HMSO. London, 1987.Google Scholar
Cm 555, Working for Patients, HMSO, London, 1989.Google Scholar
Cooke, M. and Ronalds, C. (1987), ‘The Manchester experience III: Rusholme Well Women Clinic’, in Orr, J. (ed.), Women's Health in the Community, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester.Google Scholar
Daly, M. (1979), Gyn/Ecology, The Women's Press, London.Google Scholar
Eisner, M. and Wright, M. (1986), ‘A feminist approach to general practice’, in Webb, C. (ed.), Feminist Practice in Women's Health Care, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester.Google Scholar
Francis, H. (1985), ‘Obstetrics: a consumer oriented service? The case against’, Journal of Maternal and Child Health. 03, 69–72.Google Scholar
Horrobin, D. (1977), Medical Hubris, Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Howell, M. (1975), ‘A women's health school?’, Social Policy, 6:2, 50–53.Google ScholarPubMed
Klein, R. (1973), Complaints Against Doctors, Charles Knight, London.Google Scholar
The Lancet (1987), No. 8573, 1476–1477.Google Scholar
Leeson, J. and Gray, J. (1978), Women and Medicine, Tavistock, London.Google Scholar
Manchester Community Health Councils (1981), ‘Well Women Clinics: Proposals for Manchester’, (unpublished).Google Scholar
Maynard, A., Marinker, M. and Gray, D. (1985), ‘The doctor, the patient and their contract III. Alternative contracts: are they viable?’, British Medical Journal, 292, 31 05, 1438–1440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oakley, A. (1987), ‘From walking wombs to test tube babies’, in Stanworth, M. (ed.), Reproductive Technologies, Polity Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Richardson, J. (1987), ‘Well Women Centres, a survey’, (unpublished).Google Scholar
Ruzeck, S. (1978), The Women's Health Movement, Praeger, New York.Google Scholar
Saffron, L. (1985), ‘Clinical smears: problems with Well Women Clinics’, Trouble and Strife, 5, 13–16.Google Scholar
Savage, W. (1986), A Savage Enquiry, Virago Press, London.Google Scholar
Scully, D. and Bart, P. (1978), ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the orifice: women in gynaecology textbooks’, in Ehrenreich, J. (ed.), The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine, Monthly Review Press, New York.Google Scholar
Spencer, B., Gray, J., Dunham, M. and Jones, V. (1982), ‘An evaluation of the Manchester Well Women Clinic’ (unpublished).Google Scholar
South Manchester Well Women Clinics (1983), ‘Follow up questionnaires’, (unpublished).Google Scholar
Stilwell, B. (1984), ‘The nurse in practice’, Nursing Mirror, 158:21, 17–19.Google ScholarPubMed
Tindall, V.R. (1987), Jeffcoate's Principles of Gynaecology, 5th Edition, Butterworth, London.Google Scholar
Tunnadine, D. and Green, R. (1978), Unwanted Pregnancy— An Accident or Illness?, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Willson, J.R. (1971), Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Morby, St. Louis.Google Scholar
Worcester, N. and Whatley, M. (1988), ‘The response of the health care system to the women's health movement: the selling of women's health centres’, in Rosser, S. (ed.), Feminism Within the Science and Health Care Professions: Overcoming Resistance, Pergamon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Young, G. (1981), ‘A woman in medicine: reflections from the inside’, in Roberts, H. (ed.), Women, Health and Reproduction, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar