Displacing the patient: a situational analysis of patient figures in strategic communication at a hospital

This analysis is based on an empirical study of a Danish hospital‟s communication programme entitled: 'The Perspective of the Patient'. The paper explores how strategic documents of the programme organize the communication work through situated displacements of the patient. Based on methodological elements from situational analysis (Clarke 2005) the analysis examines how the hospital‟s patient communication is not only about disease treatment, but rather about information treatment of the patient in order to attain a high level of patient satisfaction. The goal of patient satisfaction addresses both a care-oriented approach to the patient and also deploys market perceptions of patients as homogeneous target groups to which information can be standardized. In the latter approach (market orientation), the patient is also a resource for organizational development. Overall, the strategy presents an information-pursuing patient figure making it possible to streamline the organization's care orientation on market conditions. In contrast to a dichotomy of care and market as mutually exclusive (Mol 2008), care and market appear to be intertwined in political patient figures through which the organization is trying to manage the patient as well as transform itself from the inside.