Cosificación del cuerpo en los servicios de salud públicos desde la visión del personal médico

Abstract

I adress the matter of body objectification in health services, specifically in the Social Security Mexican Institute (IMSS for spanish) from a qualitative analysis of a focal group with postgraduate medical students. I show different objectification features such as patient identification as the illness itself during attention, the loss of conversation as a fundamental element for diagnosis, the commercialization of services, among others. I argue that the prior examples take place in late capitalism and globalization, just when it is the market that imposes laws to what happens in society and that turns everything into merchandise, in this particular case, the bodies taken care of in health institutions but also health services by caring for efficiency, effectiveness and yield over quality and respect of human rights. This has ecome an ethic problem in patient service since it makes difficult for them to exercise their human rights and it enables their flagrant violation. Even though nowadays international agreements and commitments on human rights respect have benn made, health staff makes it difficult and transgresses it in a context of excesive rationing in which they cannot resolve this matters.