On the analysis of medical work: general practitioners, opiate abusing patients and medical sociology.

Although general practice has provided the setting for a wide range of medical sociological analyses, those analyses have rarely focussed upon the care of specific patient groups or illness conditions. In the main, medical sociologists have chosen to portray general practice more in terms of their own secular interests in the processes of, for example, power, domination and communication - processes which although evident within the consultation are not unique to it. This topical neglect of the care of specific patient groups within general practice is, I argue, part of a broader neglect of the topic of medical work as conceived by practitioners, which arises at least in part from a combination of methodological, theoretical, ideological and attitudinal factors. This paper uses the opportunity of a study focussing upon general practitioners' treatment of opiate abusing patients to explore these and related issues and concludes with a call for an applied sociology of medical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]