Faire travailler un patient le crâne ouvert

Awake brain surgery implies the active participation of the patient in the operation through motor and cognitive exercises; it aims at removing as many tumors as possible without causing irreversible neurological sequelae. This intervention challenges the operating theatre’s symbolic order and the p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Nicolas El Haïk-Wagner
Format: Article
Language:fra
Published: Association Anthropologie Médicale Appliquée au Développement et à la Santé 2024-10-01
Series:Anthropologie & Santé
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/anthropologiesante/13797
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Summary:Awake brain surgery implies the active participation of the patient in the operation through motor and cognitive exercises; it aims at removing as many tumors as possible without causing irreversible neurological sequelae. This intervention challenges the operating theatre’s symbolic order and the professionnals’ collective dispositions, such as the objectification of the patient. Based on observations and interviews in the Department of neurosurgery at a Paris teaching hospital, this article argues that having patients work in awake surgery involves “constraint work,” legitimized by a psycho-cognitive discourse. This discourse does not, however, exhaust the dilemmas professionals face with blurred ethical standards and heightened uncertainty, which make this intervention a shared “test of professionnality.” The workgroup, which shares the “emotional work” and promotes the figure of an “active patient,” helps professionals get through this test.
ISSN:2111-5028