Racialised prescribing: enacting race/ethnicity in clinical practice guidelines and in accounts of clinical practice

Smart, A and Weiner, K (2018) 'Racialised prescribing: enacting race/ethnicity in clinical practice guidelines and in accounts of clinical practice.' Sociology of Health and Illness, 40 (5). pp. 843-858. ISSN 0141-9889

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12727

Abstract

This paper examines the articulation and enactment of racialised classifications in clinical practice guidelines and in accounts of clinical practice. It contributes to debates about racialisation in medicine and its consequences. The research centred on the case study of prescribing guidelines for hypertension in England and Wales, drawing on documentary sources and semi-structured expert interviews. We found that conceptual and socio-political uncertainties existed about how to interpret the designation ‘black patients’ and about the practices for identifying patients’ race/ethnicity. To ‘close’ uncertainties, and thus produce the guidelines and treat patients, respondents drew authority from disparate elements of the ‘topologies of race’. This has implications for understanding processes of racialisation and for the future use of racialised clinical practice guidelines. We argue that clinical practice guidelines play a ‘nodal’ role in racialisation by forming an authoritative material connection that creates a path for translating racialised research into racialised healthcare practice, and that they carry with them implicit conceptual and socio-political uncertainties that are liable to create inconsistencies in healthcare practice.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: ethnicity, race, drugs/medication
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions: School of Sciences
UoA: Business & Management
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12727
Date Deposited: 22 Feb 2018 09:55
Last Modified: 15 Aug 2021 09:49
URI / Page ID: https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/10808
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