Medical Sociology
An Introduction
Hannah Bradby

Teachers collaborating on a medical curriculum tend to argue that their own
specialist subject requires a significant amount of time to be devoted to it and
fierce debates over the relative merits of histopathology, biochemistry and
anthropology as part of a doctor’s education can ensue. Medical sociology has
proved no exception to this rule and it has had a powerful ally, in the formof the
GeneralMedicalCouncil and its publication Tomorrow’sDoctors (first published
in 1999with a second edition in 2001, available fromwww.gmc-uk.org/education/
undergraduate/tomdoc.pdf), in arguing that an understanding of the social
nature of illness and healthcare is essential for a medical education. Of course,
the contribution of sociology (or any other discipline) to medical education
should, ideally, be judged on what difference it makes to practice. In this regard
sociology has been extremely successful in that many sociological ideas about
healthcare have become mainstream, for instance, the various debates about
institutionalization, care in the community, excessmedical intervention in childbirth,
racism in the mental health services and class inequalities in mortality.
This book distils a selection of the insights offered by a critical social science
perspective for a medical audience. The range of material on health, illness
and the medical profession seeks to engage practitioners of medicine
and to encourage ongoing critical thinking of the type that can be worn down
by the exigencies of getting through a medical education. The pressures of
passing the assessment hurdles en route to becoming medically qualified are
felt especially strongly by those following a four year accelerated course, and
it was teaching these students in the medical school at the University of
Warwick that made me want to write this book. These students have been
challenging, engaged, lively, combative, dismissive, emotional, enthusiastic,
naive and cynical – sometimes all in the space of a single lesson. However,
their shared sense of purpose in wishing to provide medical care for people
in need is impressive.