Uncovering the impact of a diagnosis

The sociology of diagnosis, particularly how medical classification relates to social and cultural factors, is the focus of extensive research by an academic at Victoria University of Wellington.

Annemarie Jutel

The sociology of diagnosis, particularly how medical classification relates to social and cultural factors, is the focus of extensive research by an academic at Victoria University of Wellington.

Annemarie Jutel is an associate professor at Victoria’s Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health who, after training and working as a nurse, left clinical practice to study the sociological aspects of health and illness.

Over the course of her academic career, Dr Jutel has centred her research on diagnosis with her latest work, supported by Victoria’s University Research Fund, focused on exploring the impact of difficult diagnoses on patients and doctors.

“While diagnosis is important in identifying and curing disease, it also has a strong social impact. Delivering a diagnosis can destabilise a person’s sense of his or herself and future potential, often as powerfully as the ailment itself—it can be a source of anxiety or of relief, of hope or of despair,” says Dr Jutel.

“It also structures the experience of health and illness, and provides frameworks for communication and structuring relationships. If you go to a doctor and get a diagnosis, nothing has changed physically—but that diagnosis can change your outlook on everything, and extend its impact to family and friends too.

Dr Jutel says she is trying to understand more about the impact of diagnosis beyond its expected medical purposes.

“Popular culture is a rich source of information about that, from TV shows and movies, to cartoons, novels and poems. But, it’s also interesting to look at how doctors talk about the social impact of diagnosis. Of course, they discuss it in medical journal articles, but they also write about it in memoirs, and creative work.”

Dr Jutel is the founder and facilitator of the Critical Diagnosis Network, a group of researchers, students and community members from a range of disciplines who are dedicated to exploring social, cultural, creative and critical perspectives of diagnosis.

She says people are often fearful of the power of a diagnosis, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

“I hope that by analysing diagnoses from perspectives other than clinical ones, I can offer a broader understanding of how people react to disease—that potentially has a lot to offer medical professionals and the public in terms of health as well as social outcomes.”

Dr Jutel’s work contributes to Victoria University’s distinctive emphasis on improving health and wellbeing in our communities, and its commitment to creative interdisciplinary research of benefit to the wider community.