Le système de soins britannique après la guerre

“Ghosts in the machine”: patients, the public and participation in post-war British health care


Alex Mold (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

Thursday 13th March

WF38 on the first floor of the Medical School at 5.30pm
College of Medical and Dental Sciences
School of Health and Population Sciences

In his history of British health care Rudolf Klein called patients ‘the ghosts in the NHS machinery’. Patients, he argued, were not actors in the health policy arena until at least the mid 1970s because they lacked institutional representation. This paper will explore the extent to which patients and the public were ‘ghosts in the NHS machine’ from the mid 1960s to the present. Drawing on research on the development of the patient as consumer, this paper will consider the place of patients and the public in the history of post-war health care in Britain.

Patients and the public have not been studied to the same degree as health professionals and medical institutions, partly because of practical problems, but also as a result of the way in which medical history has developed. I will argue that we should study patients and the public, outline some of the ways in which this can be done, and discuss what impact this has on our view of both post-war medicine and medical history

ALL ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND

Details of future seminars are available from: Dr Vanessa Heggie, History of Medicine Unit, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT.
Email: v.heggie@bham.ac.uk Tel: 0121 415 8184

HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH  RESEARCH SEMINAR SPRING TERM 2014