Une pratique hospitalière des médecines non conventionnelles à l’essai
Abstract
A few years ago, the hospital in Pitigliano (Tuscany) was almost closed due to centralization policies of Italian hospitals. Since 2011, this Tuscan hospital has been at the heart of a structural reorganization project with the creation of an “integrated medicine” service, combining non-conventional medicine (acupuncture and homeopathy) and biomedicine. Based on an ethnography of care practices in clinical situations, this study shows how the normative constraints of hospital work (insertion of other therapies in a biomedical structure, organization of teamwork, interrelations of disciplinary approaches) and the humanistic aspirations of these health professionals (discourse, values, motivations, personal paths) are articulated to grasp the political and ideological logic that underlies them both on the individual and collective level. In other words, this experience of medical pluralism can be considered as a starting point for a reflection on the contemporary transformations of hospital clinical practices underway in Italy as well as in other European countries.
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