Study Of Interactions Between Doctors And Patients From The Perspective Of Orientation Of "Relational Hospitalization"

"Relationship among people"or we say"guanxi"is a key term in Chinese society. In contemporary China, the word"relationship"must be taken into consideration when some social phenomena and events are to be explained profoundly. Chinese people are quite sensitive to it. Having relationship or not has been the key point as to whether to help or to support. Under the guidance of this concept, the behaviors of Chinese people are mainly"relational orientation". In order to establish a kind of relationship, people tend to try their best to change those unrelated to be related, and this phenomenon is called"establishing relationships"which is to make oneself into a well connected network. And such kind of networks can always help to achieve one's aim. With the help of such a network, people can set up relationships among those who are unfamiliar with, or can change those remote relationships into close and helpful ones as people in China value their friends or acquaintances much. This kind of relationship determines people's behaviors, and its usefulness shows people's much orientation of utility.Hospitalization and seeing a doctor are very common in our daily life. It is quite common in our daily medical treatment that patients tend to choose those doctors and hospitals that they know or familiar with. Or they will make use of their social resources to find doctors or hospitals that their friends know or familiar with. The author had worked in a large scale upper first-class hospital for more than 20 years. And I has a through and profound understanding toward the medical treatment in hospitals as I was always asked for help by many friends who wanted to come to the hospital to be hospitalized. I has got much first hand experience of it and I named it as"relational hospitalization".This dissertation tries to make a research on the process of patients being treated in hospitals with some localized theories. It is based on two main localized theories: 1) Relationships among people are the core concept to explain Chinese people's social behaviors; 2) Relational orientation is one of the main social behaviors of Chinese people in their social relationship networks. This research aims at studying the patients'orientation of hospitalization from a perspective of sociology and it also aims at analyzing Chinese people's social behaviors of hospitalization with the native Chinese concept"relationships".The following research methods are adopted in the dissertation: the study of documents, the investigation of questionnaires, the study of interview, the study of human's behaviors, and the analyses of the combination of quality and quantity. The investigation is mostly made through questionnaires and interviews. The author designed two different kinds of questionnaires for doctors and patients. 200 questionnaires for doctors were handed out, among which 172 were valid. 500 questionnaires were sent out to patients, and 417 were valid. At the same time, the author made a deep interview with 15 doctors and 15 patients. I designed an outline for the interview according to the aim and content of his research. On the basis of the analysis of the statistics of the interview and the collection of the materials, I got the following conclusions from the perspective of"relational hospitalization": People's orientation of"relational hospitalization"is quite conspicuous.According to the investigation, patients'orientation of relational hospitalization during the course of seeing a doctor is quite clear. They try hard to find a doctor they know or their friends know. Most doctors accept and admit"relational hospitalization", and they even hope that their friends can introduce more patients to them through all kinds of relationships.Both doctors and patients benefit a lot from"relational hospitalization". Medical treatment is rare resources in current society. Patients can get close to some authoritative doctors with the help of relationships to make their hospitalization successful. With more and more introduced patients, doctors get the money they want, and the most important is that their reputation is also widely spread. Therefore, during the course of"relational hospitalization", both doctors and patients benefit a lot."Relational hospitalization"between doctors and patients is rational. Patients adhere to the principle of rational"relational hospitalization"throughout the course of medical treatment which is mainly manifested on their ultimate goals. Their chief aim is to get close to doctors and get their authority. Besides that, they also want to get special care from doctors, especially on treatment. When doctors treat patients introduced by relationships, they do offer some proper favor to them but on the basis of their ethical criteria, rather than submitting to their friends or the patients'will.There is a difference in the cognition of the results of"relational hospitalization" between doctors and patients, which eventually leads to the conceptional misplacement of doctors and patients'interaction. With"relational hospitalization", patients'main aim is to get close to doctors to get their authority, and their ultimate aim is to receive as much care as they can from the doctors during the course of treatment. They also hope to affect doctor's treatment scheme to gain the best therapeutic effect via relational hospitalization. However, during the course of treatment, doctors must observe their professional ethics, and simultaneously they have to reckon the feelings and faces of related people. They offer more service and communication to those related patients, but as to the treatment scheme, special care won't be given. Thus, there must be a cognitive difference in the effects of"relational hospitalization"between doctors and patients, and it eventually results in their misplaced interaction.The last chapter of this dissertation discusses different understandings of the meanings of being taken care of in hospital between doctors and patients and the misplaced interactions resulted from the gap of different expectations. The author draws the conclusion that it is the different understandings of illness that leads to the misplaced interaction. At the end, the author discusses the ways of reconstructing the benign interactions between doctors and patients. The focus here is the influence of"relational hospitalization"on the medical field, and the ways that reconstructing good interactions between doctors and patients on the levels of medical concept and medical management.This research is not restricted to the analysis on the phenomenon of"relational hospitalization". Its ultimate aim is to help people fully understand Chinese society by way of the empirical study of the interactions of doctors and patients. And the author also hopes his research can help to find new orientations of Chinese people's social behaviors. This study is performed under the background of social transformation which is to find the influence that has transformed Chinese society and the mode of people's social behaviors through the empirical investigation and analysis of the"relational hospitalization".The breakpoint of this research is the"hospitalization"which is a common and significant daily social behavior. And its aim is to examine the transformation of the mode of Chinese social behavior under the background of social reform. The following questions thus must be taken into consideration:Relational orientation still exists and it's becoming more and more serious. The investigation data and interview materials of this research have once more proved Chinese people's relational orientation in their social behaviors.The utilitarian of relational orientation is becoming stronger. Our questionnaire data and the interview materials show that patients'relational hospitalization and doctors'acceptation of it are mainly out of the aim of utilitarian. The aim of patients'relational hospitalization is to get close to doctors and get their authority, and they also want to receive some special care on treatment. The aim of the doctors'is to gain a good reputation and some economical interests during the course of"relational hospitalization".Relational orientation is becoming more and more rational at present, which means both sides stick to the role of being a rational person during the course of treatment. The rationality here not only refers to the economical interests, but also refers to concerned people's awareness of his own role and responsibility. The data of this research show that doctors stick to their professional ethics and deeply know their roles of curing the illness to save the patients. Under the condition that patients hope to affect the treatment scheme via relational hospitalization, doctors have never been influenced except that they offer some economical more service and communication to them. This, on the other hand, shows doctors and patients'orientation of universalism and exceptionalism. Doctors'rationality in treatment scheme indicates that the interaction between doctors and patients presents unilateral particularism.The author believes that the above changes of relational orientation are specific in the period of social transformation. In this period, the biggest characteristic of Chinese society is the scarcity of resources and the irregularity of the system. And these two characteristics lead to the orientation of relational hospitalization's increasing seriousness and its tendencies of utilitarian and rationality. In a transformed society with rare resources, the more insufficiency of some resource and the fewer people controlling it, the more people tend to adopt the methods of striking up an acquaintance or back door deals. Therefore, relationships become a medium through which people obtain their benefits, and the nature of relational orientation develops into the exchange of interests. During the period of transformation, as competitions are not sufficient, information is not adequate, and the rules are not so perfect, relationships, thus, exert its functions more efficiently. As a result, benefits become the chief objective of people's relational orientation, and relations among people decay into the purely functional social system which later unavoidably alienated a casting couch for individuals to obtain some social resources. All these changes are inevitable in this transformed society, and with the perfection of China's socialist market economic system and the perfection of laws and regulations, they are doomed to fade away until die out some day.To sum up, this dissertation makes a deep research on patients'orientation of hospitalization from the perspective of medical sociology with the background of current Chinese social transformation. It also analyses the relations of doctors and patients in Chinese social medical behaviors, puts forward and defines the concept of"relational hospitalization"and investigates the orientation of it, discusses the influence of"relational hospitalization"on doctors and patients, puts forward the new viewpoint of"doctors and patients'misplaced interactions", analyses the representation and the cause of doctors and patients'misplaced interactions, and explores the channels of reconstructing benign interactions between doctors and patients from the orientation of"relational hospitalization". In a word, this research is of great creative significance both theoretically and practically.