Social Representations of Health Held by Health Professionals: the Case of General Practitioners and Home-care Nurses

Abstract

To date, social representations research in the field of health and illness has focused mainly on lay representations of health. In the context of the “New Public Health”, the more general concept of health (instead of the more reduced concept of curing illness) has become a major target for professional work. From this trend, the following research questions can be drawn: do health professionals hold a concept of health? If so, what is the major focus of such a concept? And does it include topics from the New Public Health discourse? Following a short review of the research into social representations of health, some preliminary results of a qualitative research study are presented. This study focused on representations of health held by two groups of professionals - general practitioners and nurses - both working in home care with elderly people in two German cities. The first results of this study found that, in both groups, different types of health concepts can be identified. In both groups, a strong reference was made to the World Health Organization definition. Among other concepts, a relative concept of health was held. The concepts are expressed with reference to the specific clientele of home-care work. The results are discussed with reference to the differences and overlaps with the other research on health concepts.