The underside of medicalisation: the portrayal of medical error over time in North American popular mass magazines

Abstract

In this article, I examine the changing representation of medical error in high circulating North American popular magazines in three time periods 1980–1989, 1990–1999 and 2000–2014. Although there were stories of medical error in all the time periods they differed both in their frequency and in the dominant discourses. In the first decade, medical error was represented as an occasional, unique and unusual event. In the next two and a half decades and progressively over time, medical error was represented as commonplace in all parts of the health care system, at all stages of life and from pre-diagnosis to death. Readers are increasingly expected to take responsibility for managing the risk of such errors by continuous, assiduous monitoring of the possible dangers of mistakes made by doctors, in hospitals, in laboratories, that is everywhere in the medical care system. This changing representation of medical error can be linked to the changes in the health care associated with the medicalisation of everyday life, the implementation of neo-liberal ideology and the expansion of the risk society. The individualisation of citizens as isolated, separate units is a bedrock value and assumption of all three of these major discourses. Medicalisation is based on the assumption that health problems develop in the individual body and the individual should follow medical advice to prevent them and should seek medical treatment if such prevention fails. Neo-liberalism devalues the role of the state in ensuring social welfare, emphasising the importance of individual initiative and self-responsibility for health and well-being. In the risk society, the individual is responsible for identifying and managing the risks of everyday life.

Keywords:

• Risk
• medical error
• media
• magazines
• medicalisation
• risk society

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council under Grant 410-2011-2099.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All proceeding numbers found in brackets following excerpts refer to the corresponding media text. Media references can be found at the end of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant number 410-2011-2099].