"Du kan väl ta en paracetamol?" : En etnografisk analys av maktrelationer inom svensk endometriosvård

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how a group of seven endometriosis patients in Sweden experience and perceive encounters with the Swedish healthcare system, and how power and resistance operate within these encounters. The study focuses on how medical authority shapes the understanding of pain and the body, along with how patients navigate, resist, and negotiate these power relations in their everyday lives. This thesis has been executed by utilising semi-structured qualitative interviews with seven endometriosis patients, autoethnographic methods in the shape of the author’s own experiences as an endometriosis patient, and observing two of the larger endometriosis support groups on the social media platform Facebook. The theoretical framework used in this thesis is a Foucauldian inspired perspective on medical epistemology, discipline, and power, as well as phenomenology. Theories of epistemic injustice and hermeneutical marginalisation are also used throughout the thesis. A short summary of the analysis includes how patients frequently experience their symptoms being minimised, questioned, or misunderstood in healthcare settings. Healthcare professionals exercise medical authority through epistemic power, and retain an interpretative prerogative in relation to patients’ symptoms and pain. The study further demonstrates how patients adapt their behaviour and how they display symptoms to appear credible in the eyes of medical professionals. However, the patients show how various forms of resistance are present in their endeavours to navigate the healthcare system. Patients are not only subjects to disciplinary practises, but actively challenge them.