Pain in the Everyday Life of Traumatological Ward: Based on Interviews with Medical Staff

Abstract

This paper contributes to debate on social constructionism in medical sociology, sociology of health and illness, as well as sociology of professions. The author investigates social construction of pain in the everyday professional activity of the personnel of the traumatological ward - more concretely, traumatologists, surgeons and nurses. The article provides the information on the peculiarities of the perception of patients’ pain by the medical staff through reconstruction of emotional and rational sides of the work in the context of traumatological ward and individual professional experience. The article is based on the analysis of the author’s research of the everyday professional experience of the staff of the traumatological ward of state hospital in a small Russian town. At first a review of the main theoretical as well empirical sociological researches relevant to the topic of sociological analysis of body and pain will be presented, then the analysis of the empirical data will be provided in order to illustrate the peculiarities of pain perception of the staff of the traumatological ward.