Abstract Maternal health care continues to be excessively medicalised in many national systems. Global, national, and local level policy initiatives seek normalise low-risk birth optimise the use of clinical interventions, informed by strong evidence supporting that is centred on women’s preferences needs. Challenges remain translating into practice settings where primarily clinician-led hospit...

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Contemporary lived experiences of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are shaped by clinical and cultural encounters with illness. In sub-Saharan countries such as Zimbabwe, HIV is treated in very different ways in various therapeutic contexts including by biomedical experts, traditional medicine and faith healers. The co-existence of such expertise raises important questions around the pote...

Hope is essential in the face of terminal cancer. Generally in Western societies, patients and their families prefer their doctor to engage them in transparent, realistic, authoritative, empathic and open communication about the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer but this topic is not well studied in the Asian context. With the exponential increase in information about cancer and the many permut...

Background: Action for Rehabilitation in Neurological Injury (ARNI) is a novel community-based training programme that promotes functional independence and physical fitness in stroke survivors after formal rehabilitation. Method: We investigated the experiences of 22 stroke survivors enrolled in the 12-week programme, through their additional participation in one of four focus groups. Guidance ...

People with disabilities are a large minority that disproportionately seeks medical care. However, disability is relatively neglected in medical education and practice, and disabled people experience troubling differences and even disparities in healthcare. Practitioners can help improve healthcare for disabled people through disability studies, a multi-disciplinary field of enquiry that draws ...

Amidst projections of the increased care demands and expectations for home care, policy in this area demands urgent attention. Home care is inherently complex as it challenges us to deliberate fundamental issues of responsibility for care, and the limits of care for people in their most immediate contexts and needs. This research takes the form of a critical policy analysis of the interaction o...

OBJECTIVE Lay interest in vitamin D and the potential benefits of supplementation is considerable, but little information exists concerning lay knowledge, beliefs and attitudes towards vitamin D to inform public health initiatives and professional guidance. DESIGN Qualitative focus group study. PARTICIPANTS 58 adults capturing diversity in disease status, gender, age and ethnicity. SETTIN...

The development of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-the DSM-5-has reenergised and driven further forward critical discourse about the place and role of diagnosis in mental health. The DSM-5 has attracted considerable criticism, not least about its role in processes of medicalisation. This paper suggests the need fo...