Ventetid på OP i kritisk diskursivt perspektiv

Abstract

Patients who are hospitalized for non-elective surgery risk long waiting hours. Healthcare staff in the ward regard this as an immutable circumstance, while acknowledging it is suboptimal. In this article, we examine healthcare professionals’ discourse about patients’ preoperative waits and which effect this may have for patients’ preoperative waiting time.  We use a social constructivist approach to collection of data and analysis. The empirical data consist of six interviews with staff in the surgery ward, and are completed and analysed using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. A discourse order about patients’ preoperative wait presents four discourses: Policy/economy based discourse, biomedical discourse, democratic discourse and humanistic discourse. Discourses predominantly reproduce social practice although humanistic discourse shows potential for social change. Discourses reflect and constitute a health system in tension between patient orientation and standardization. The discourses relate to results in other studies on the Danish health system. The findings contributes to health care professionals’ critical awareness of waiting hours and language around the theme. Thus, critical awareness may contribute to social change of the practice on waits. However, it is essential to keep in mind that social change through critical awareness of waiting time is not alone a matter of language, but also linked to power relations carried by structural and organizational conditions.