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WHAT DO PEOPLE BECOME PATIETS? THE SICK ROLE AND ITS FUNCTIONS
Role is a sociological concept not a medical concept. All our roles contain certain rights and obligations. The student, for example, has the right to receive a good standard of education but is obliged to hand in essays on time and prepare for examinations; the employee has the right to work in a safe environment but is obliged to be punctual and to follow the instructions of supervisors. Most people occupy multiple roles; for example mother, employee, neighbour, daughter and friend. The person defined as ill occupies the 'sick role' and the person who becomes a patient occupies the 'patient role'. Bond and Bond (1986) state: 'The behaviour of the sick person and the behaviour of others around him must conform to the particular pattern of expectations that surround the sick role'.
Parsons (1951) was the first sociologist to elaborate the concept of the 'sick role'. He believed this role to contain two major rights and two major obligations:
Right one
The sick person is not responsible for his illness.
Right two
The sick person is relieved of normal social responsibilities.
Obligation one
The sick person must view his condition as undesirable.
Obligat ion two
The sick person must seek and cooperate with competent medical help.
Parsons thought that the second right, to be relieved of normal social responsibilities, was potentially desirable and that as this threatens social order, entry to the sick role must be controlled. The sick role legitimates illness, and behaviour viewed as deviant under some circumstances, but it also regulates it so that social obligations are not evaded unnecessarily. Hart (1985) explains: 'If outbreaks of sickness were left to the whims of individuals in the private sphere of domestic life, they might gradually erode people's sense of duty to work, to family life, to community. Only by bringing sickness into the public sphere and encasing it in a system of social control would the risks of role evasion be kept to a minimum'.
People who occupy the sick role, yet appear to enjoy it and fail to seek medical help are not keeping to their side of the bargain and are likely to meet with great disapproval from friends, family, employers and health professionals.
The official control of illness behaviour is medical certification. Parsons (1951) saw medicine as serving a social control function aimed at stabilizing society. The sick role tends to isolate the ill person from others; Garfinkel (1956) believes that this, as well as various hospital practices, such as handing over one's clothes and being denied information, emphasize the undesirable nature of the sick role.
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