IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v66y2008i1p182-188.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do diseases have a prestige hierarchy? A survey among physicians and medical students

Author

Listed:
  • Album, Dag
  • Westin, Steinar

Abstract

Surveys have shown that the prestige of medical specialities is ordered hierarchically. We investigate whether similar tacit agreement in the medical community also applies to diseases, since such rankings can affect priority settings in medical practice. A cross-sectional survey was performed in three samples of physicians and medical students in Norway in 2002. A questionnaire was sent to 305 senior doctors (response rate, 79%), 500 general practitioners (response rate, 65%) and 490 final-year medical students (response rate, 64%). Outcome measures were ratings on a 1-9 scale of the prestige these respondents believed most health personnel would accord to a sample set of 38 different diseases as well as 23 medical specialities. Both diseases and specialities were clearly and consistently ranked according to prestige. Myocardial infarction, leukaemia and brain tumour were among the highest ranked, and fibromyalgia and anxiety neurosis were among the lowest. Among specialities, neurosurgery and thoracic surgery were accorded the highest rank, and geriatrics and dermatovenerology the lowest. Our interpretation of the data is that diseases and specialities associated with technologically sophisticated, immediate and invasive procedures in vital organs located in the upper parts of the body are given high prestige scores, especially where the typical patient is young or middle-aged. At the other end, low prestige scores are given to diseases and specialities associated with chronic conditions located in the lower parts of the body or having no specific bodily location, with less visible treatment procedures, and with elderly patients.

Suggested Citation

  • Album, Dag & Westin, Steinar, 2008. "Do diseases have a prestige hierarchy? A survey among physicians and medical students," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 182-188, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:66:y:2008:i:1:p:182-188
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(07)00392-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosoff, Stephen M. & Leone, Matthew C., 1991. "The public prestige of medical specialties: Overviews and undercurrents," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 321-326, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Creed, Peter A. & Searle, Judy & Rogers, Mary E., 2010. "Medical specialty prestige and lifestyle preferences for medical students," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1084-1088, September.
    2. Grue, Jan & Johannessen, Lars E.F. & Rasmussen, Erik Fossan, 2015. "Prestige rankings of chronic diseases and disabilities. A survey among professionals in the disability field," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 180-186.
    3. Johannessen, Lars E.F., 2014. "The narrative (re)production of prestige: How neurosurgeons teach medical students to valorise diseases," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 85-91.
    4. Album, Dag & Johannessen, Lars E.F. & Rasmussen, Erik B., 2017. "Stability and change in disease prestige: A comparative analysis of three surveys spanning a quarter of a century," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 45-51.
    5. Rodriguez, Jenny K. & Procter, Stephen & Perez Arrau, Gregorio, 2023. "Reconfigured professional purpose in times of crisis: Experiences of frontline healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    6. Hofmann, Bjørn, 2020. "Biases distorting priority setting," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 52-60.
    7. Malik, Tariq H., 2019. "Society-nature-technology (SNT) nexus: Institutional causes and cures of national morbidities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 491-503.
    8. Brendan McCormack & Astrid Skatvedt, 2017. "Older people and their care partners’ experiences of living with mental health needs: a focus on collaboration and cooperation," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(1-2), pages 103-114, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rodriguez, Jenny K. & Procter, Stephen & Perez Arrau, Gregorio, 2023. "Reconfigured professional purpose in times of crisis: Experiences of frontline healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 329(C).
    2. Creed, Peter A. & Searle, Judy & Rogers, Mary E., 2010. "Medical specialty prestige and lifestyle preferences for medical students," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1084-1088, September.
    3. Johannessen, Lars E.F., 2014. "The narrative (re)production of prestige: How neurosurgeons teach medical students to valorise diseases," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 85-91.
    4. Jerry W. Kim, 2020. "Halos and Egos: Rankings and Interspecialty Deference in Multispecialty U.S. Hospitals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 2248-2268, May.
    5. Grue, Jan & Johannessen, Lars E.F. & Rasmussen, Erik Fossan, 2015. "Prestige rankings of chronic diseases and disabilities. A survey among professionals in the disability field," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 180-186.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:66:y:2008:i:1:p:182-188. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.