Medical practice: where science, technique and the world of life intersect

Abstract

This article intends to approach an aspect of medical practice that is hidden when medicine is merely treated as the reproduction of a model established by biosciences which tends to domination, control and objectification. Although medicine has advanced towards a growing scientific rationality, it works with a more comprehensive form of knowledge and there is still room, though limited, for judgment and evaluation, keeping it connected to the world of life and culture. The analysis of a patient's case, who was treated in a cardiology outpatient ward at the University Hospital of Ufba, will provide us with empirical elements to take the discussion further. Although it is not a typical case, it reveals many aspects of questions connected with medical practice that interest us: the way the patient represents his life in consultation, the ideal model adopted by doctors, the construction of supplementary narratives which aim at attributing meaning to actions that would otherwise appear undecipherable, and the modulations of medical practice.