“You don’t really know what a good life is until you’ve not got one”: Reflecting on disciplinary boundaries within multidisciplinary research tool

Greenwood, S. (2019) “You don’t really know what a good life is until you’ve not got one”: Reflecting on disciplinary boundaries within multidisciplinary research tool. British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2019, Glasgow, UK, 24-26 Apr 2019. (Unpublished)

Abstract

Multidisciplinary research is on the increase within health and social care (Green & Thorogood, 2018) – frequently between healthcare professionals, and academics working within sociology and social policy. These projects are typically fast-paced, collaborative encounters, driven by the need to produce ‘meaningful outputs’ within a pre-set time frame. This push for ‘fast’ research means that it can be more difficult to negotiate and reflect upon the normative, ‘taken-for-granted’ assumptions made along disciplinary lines. This paper shares experiences from recently completed, multidisciplinary project, which sought to develop a Quality of Life (QoL) measurement tool, specific to patients with kidney failure. Working alongside doctors, nurses, and patients, this research gathered accounts of the lived experience of being on dialysis. Previous QoL models in this area have been predominantly developed by physicians and focused on the physical impact of being on dialysis, at the expense of excluding the emotional and social effects of being a ‘dialysis patient’. From an early stage, it became clear that different parties held varied perspectives of what a ‘good’ quality of life involves. Understandings were typically influenced by class, gender, and ethnicity – thus subject to pre-existing hierarchies of power and inequality. Consequently, those with the most marginalised voices – in this case, patients – typically went unheard within the development of previous models. The model derived from this research synthesised both academic, practitioner, and patient perspectives to produce a more meaningful and responsive method to evaluate the quality of life of patients with kidney failure.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Unpublished
• Refereed: No
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Greenwood, Dr Sharon
• Authors: Greenwood, S.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology; R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies