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Ethnographies and Health pp 123–139Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Symbolic, Collective and Intimate Spaces: An Ethnographic Approach to the Places of Integrated Care

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Abstract

An ethnographic approach to the subject of integrated care offers new insights by exploring the locations of care for people with multiple and complex healthcare needs. Drawing on the idea of trans-ethnography, this chapter describes how health and social care is organised in different kinds of overlapping and connected spaces in one case study of integrated care in England. The symbolic space of the planning unit, the collective space of the hospital and the intimate space of the home are connected and mutually reinforcing through ideas about avoiding hospital admissions for people with multiple long-term conditions. Ethnography of the situated nature of health care results in a critical approach showing that ideas about integrated care reinforce and reproduce divisions between health and social care.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/topics/integrated-care/accountable-care-organisations-explained.

  2. 2.

    See https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/devolution.

  3. 3.

    Sustainability and Transformation Plans Delivering the Forward View: NHS Planning Guidance 2016/17–2020/21 (2016): NHS England . Available from: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/planning-guid-16-17-20-21.pdf.

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Acknowledgements

The case study in this chapter was developed during doctoral research at the University of Oxford and is one of a series of organisational case studies in the SCALS (Studies in Co-creating Assisted Living Solutions) research programme funded by the Wellcome Trust.

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  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Gemma Hughes

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  1. Gemma Hughes
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Correspondence to Gemma Hughes .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Emma Garnett

  2. Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

    Joanna Reynolds

  3. Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Sarah Milton

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Hughes, G. (2018). Symbolic, Collective and Intimate Spaces: An Ethnographic Approach to the Places of Integrated Care. In: Garnett, E., Reynolds, J., Milton, S. (eds) Ethnographies and Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89396-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89396-9_8

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89395-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89396-9

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