Bernard J. Bergen

Bio: Bernard J. Bergen is an academic researcher from Dartmouth College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Social change & Social environment. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 16 publications receiving 272 citations.

The anomaly, the chronic patient and the play of medical power.

Abstract: In the middle of the twentieth century, the anomaly, the person whose body suffered the effects of an accident and who elicited a compassionate response designed to protect the anomaly from the effects of the accident, disappeared. The 'disabled', the 'handicapped', and the 'chronic patient' replaced the anomaly in medical discourse. This change is reflected in specific, technical aspects of medicine - medicine's understanding and treatment of two anomalous bodies - and in general medical ideology and the organization of medical care. The change extended the medical gaze to the most intimate aspects of life and to the fine seams of society where the anomaly used to wander. We must understand this change as part of the paradoxical play of medical power. Medical power became more totalizing, integrative and rapidly responsive just as it became more unobtrusive, humane and liberating.

24-Hour Psychiatric Consultation Via TV

Abstract: Consultation services via two-way closed circuit television have proved to be effective in helping nonpsychiatric physicians to improve their knowledge of psychiatry and to treat their emotionally ill patients. The authors describe such a service set up between Hanover, N.H., and Claremont, N.H., a community 26 miles away. The service has aided the physicians in maintaining the majority of their referred cases in the community and has provided them with a valuable educational experience.

The Relationship to Death as a Source of Stress for Nurses on a Coronary Care Unit.

Abstract: This paper attempts to understand one of the ways in which nurses on a coronary care unit may be subjected to stress around the problem of establishing a meaningful relationship to death The themes that nurses expressed during the course of a support group which they had requested are analyzed and discussed The paper focuses on the stress felt by the nurses over responsibility for controlling illness and death which indicated an unconscious confusion between the feeling of being responsible for the care of an ill or dying patient and the feeling of being responsible for the occurrence of the patient's illness or death The possible source of this stressful confusion in medicine's and society's own relationship to death is discussed

The Social Model of Disability and the Disappearing Body: Towards a sociology of impairment

Abstract: What is the case for and how would one begin to construct a sociology of impairment? This paper argues that the realignment of the disability/impairment distinction is vital for the identity politics of the disability movement. The body is at the heart of contemporary political and theoretical debate, yet the social model of disability makes it an exile. The transformation of the body from a reactionary to an emancipatory concept implies a sociology of impairment. This paper explores the contribution that post-structuralism and phenomenology might make to this end.

The Doctor, His Patient and the Illness

Abstract: may make for difficulty and perhaps the work could be improved by better integration of the chapters. This is not an adverse criticism of the book. It is merely a constructive criticism for the future, for there is no doubt that this work is the most useful book on operative obstetrics today in the English language. It is also the most beautifully produced and one of the most worth-while books on obstetrics in the whole of modern medical literature. E.E.P.

Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic individual

Abstract: This paper considers the implications of the rise of the new molecular genetics for the ways in which we are governed and the ways in which we govern ourselves. Using examples of genetic screening and genetic discrimination in education, employment and insurance, and a case study of debates among those at risk of developing Huntington's Disease and their relatives, we suggest that some of the claims made by critics of these new developments are misplaced. While there are possibilities of genetic discrimination, the key event is the creation of the person 'genetically at risk'. But genetic risk does not imply resignation in the face of an implacable biological destiny: it induces new and active relations to oneself and one's future. In particular, it generates new forms of 'genetic responsibility', locating actually and potentially affected individuals within new communities of obligation and identification. Far from generating fatalism, the rewriting of personhood at a genetic level and its visualization ...

The Nursing Stress Scale: Development of an instrument

Abstract: Despite increased recognition of the stress experienced by hospital nursing staffs and its effects on burnout, job satisfaction, turnover, and patient care, few instruments exist that can be used to measure stress. This paper describes the development of an instrument, the Nursing Stress Scale (NSS). It consists of 34 items that describe situations that have been identified as causing stress for nurses in the performance of their duties. It provides a total stress score as well as scores on each of seven subscales that measure the frequency of stress experienced by nurses in the hospital environment. The Nursing Stress Scale was administered to 122 nurses on five hospital units. Factor analysis indicated seven major sources of stress that closely paralleled the conceptual categories of stress on which the scale was based. Test-retest reliability as well as four measures of internal consistency indicated that the Nursing Stress Scale and its seven subscales are reliable. Validity was determined by correlating the total score from the Nursing Stress Scale with measures of trait anxiety, job satisfaction, and nursing turnover hypothesized to be related to stress. In addition, the ability of the scale to differentiate hospital units and groups of nurses known to experience high levels of stress resulting in staff turnover was examined.