The journal I will be talking about is “Good Patients and Problem Patients: Conformity and Deviance in a General Hospital” by Judith Lorber, this journal talks about how good patients and deviant patients are treated by doctors and nurses. I found this journal very interesting because the journal talks about how deviant patients might be treated differently then “good” patients. The good patients get better treatment and dealt with better than deviant patients. One of the things I found surprising was that age and education played a factor into how the patients were treated. The patients who were younger and more educated proved to be more conforming and many of them did not show deviant behavior. The patients who came in with serious illness’s were also less deviant, since they are more dependent on the doctor or nurse to help them.

But what makes a patient deviant? Are patients who do not conform to what the doctor or nurse is telling them considered to be deviant? I do not really see that as deviant behavior, I think someone with deviant behavior would more likely be someone who does not listen to the doctor or nurse. Through reading this journal it seems to me that doctors and nurses look at patients who do not conform to be the ones who are deviant. Many people do not trust doctors when they go in to a hospital, they think that doctors tell them the wrong things or are not listening to them when they are trying to explain things. Especially after the video we watched last week for our participation assignment I can see why some people might not always want to do what a doctor is recommending them to do. Doctors having to meet a specific quota or else they would be getting fired is not about thinking about the patient. It is more about thinking about how much money they can get out of the patient and also admitting patients that might not need to be admitted.