Screening for breast cancer: medicalization, visualization and the embodied experience.

Women's perspectives on breast screening (mammography and breast awareness) were explored in interviews with midlife women sampled for diversity of background and health experience. Attending mammography screening was considered a social obligation despite women's fears and experiences of discomfort. Women gave considerable legitimacy to mammography visualizations of the breast, and the expert interpretation of these. In comparison, women lacked confidence in breast awareness practices, directly comparing their sensory capabilities with those of the mammogram, although mammography screening did not substitute breast awareness in a straightforward way. The authors argue that reliance on visualizing technology may create a fragmented sense of the body, separating the at risk breast from embodied experience.

Language barriers in health and social care consultations in the community: a comparative study of responses in Ireland and England.

OBJECTIVE: This paper focuses on the implications of migration for host health and social care systems in terms of linguistic diversity, language barriers and language supports. The objective is to compare Ireland, as a context responding to the new challenge of language barriers in healthcare, and England, as a context in which the management of language barriers is being re-assessed. METHODS: Empirical data from two action research studies in Ireland and England are compared. The combined data set is 146 data collection episodes with service users with limited English and their health and social care providers. RESULTS: Key findings are that the same range of formal and informal responses to language barriers occurs in practice in both contexts but proportions of knowledge and use of these responses differ. English service providers have more awareness about the use of formal responses than Irish service providers but uptake of formal responses remains low in both contexts. Data from service users confirms these findings. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need for more attention to the implementation of policies for language barriers in both Ireland and England, further research about the normalization processes associated with these consultations and knowledge transfer networks to facilitate on-going dialogue between all key stakeholders with an emphasis on supporting service users' involvement and participation.

Mammography screening: views from women and primary care physicians in Crete.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women and a leading cause of death from cancer in women in Europe. Although breast cancer incidence is on the rise worldwide, breast cancer mortality over the past 25 years has been stable or decreasing in some countries and a fall in breast cancer mortality rates in most European countries in the 1990s was reported by several studies, in contrast, in Greece have not reported these favourable trends. In Greece, the age-standardised incidence and mortality rate for breast cancer per 100.000 in 2006 was 81,8 and 21,7 and although it is lower than most other countries in Europe, the fall in breast cancer mortality that observed has not been as great as in other European countries. There is no national strategy for screening in this country. This study reports on the use of mammography among middle-aged women in rural Crete and investigates barriers to mammography screening encountered by women and their primary care physicians. DESIGN: Semi-structured individual interviews. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Thirty women between 45-65 years of age, with a mean age of 54,6 years, and standard deviation 6,8 from rural areas of Crete and 28 qualified primary care physicians, with a mean age of 44,7 years and standard deviation 7,0 serving this rural population. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Qualitative thematic analysis. RESULTS: Most women identified several reasons for not using mammography. These included poor knowledge of the benefits and indications for mammography screening, fear of pain during the procedure, fear of a serious diagnosis, embarrassment, stress while anticipating the results, cost and lack of physician recommendation. Physicians identified difficulties in scheduling an appointment as one reason women did not use mammography and both women and physicians identified distance from the screening site, transportation problems and the absence of symptoms as reasons for non-use. CONCLUSION: Women are inhibited from participating in mammography screening in rural Crete. The provision of more accessible screening services may improve this. However physician recommendation is important in overcoming women's inhibitions. Primary care physicians serving rural areas need to be aware of barriers preventing women from attending mammography screening and provide women with information and advice in a sensitive way so women can make informed decisions regarding breast cancer screening.

Family health narratives: midlife women's concepts of vulnerability to illness.

Perceptions of vulnerability to illness are strongly influenced by the salience given to personal experience of illness in the family. This article proposes that this salience is created through autobiographical narrative, both as individual life story and collectively shaped family history. The article focuses on responses related to health in the family drawn from semi-structured interviews with women in a qualitative study exploring midlife women's health. Uncertainty about the future was a major emergent theme. Most respondents were worried about a specified condition such as heart disease or breast cancer. Many women were uncertain about whether illness in the family was inherited. Some felt certain that illness in the family meant that they were more vulnerable to illness or that their relatives' ageing would be mirrored in their own inevitable decline, while a few expressed cautious optimism about the future. In order to elucidate these responses, we focused on narratives in which family members' appearance was discussed and compared to that of others in the family. The visualization of both kinship and the effects of illness led to strong similarities being seen as grounds for worry. This led to some women distancing themselves from the legacies of illness in their families. Women tended to look at the whole family as the context for their perceptions of vulnerability, developing complex patterns of resemblance or difference within their families.

The nature of medical evidence and its inherent uncertainty for the clinical consultation: qualitative study.

OBJECTIVE: To describe how clinicians deal with the uncertainty inherent in medical evidence in clinical consultations. DESIGN: Qualitative study. SETTING: Clinical consultations related to hormone replacement therapy, bone densitometry, and breast screening in seven general practices and three secondary care clinics in the UK NHS. PARTICIPANTS: Women aged 45-64. RESULTS: 45 of the 109 relevant consultations included sufficient discussion for analysis. The consultations could be categorised into three groups: focus on certainty for now and this test, with slippage into general reassurance; a coherent account of the medical evidence for risks and benefits, but blurring of the uncertainty inherent in the evidence and giving an impression of certainty; and acknowledging the inherent uncertainty of the medical evidence and negotiating a provisional decision. CONCLUSION: Strategies health professionals use to cope with the uncertainty inherent in medical evidence in clinical consultations include the use of provisional decisions that allow for changing priorities and circumstances over time, to avoid slippage into general reassurance from a particular test result, and to avoid the creation of a myth of certainty.