Cormier Nicholas R, Gallo-Cruz Selina R, Beard Renee L
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, USA.
Sociol Health Illn. 2017 Nov;39(8):1496-1513. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12610. Epub 2017 Oct 10.
The physiological risks of organ transplantation are well documented, but more poorly understood are the sociological ways in which organ recipients redefine themselves in reaction to physiological risks and social changes accompanying transplantation. This article analyses transplantation as a procedure that is not only physiologically risky but also poses risk to the social identity of the recipient, and explores how transplant recipients cognitively navigate transplantation surgery from waiting for to recovering after a transplant. It builds on previous sociological exploration of risk as a socially constructed process mediating experiences of health and illness with a focused contribution on explaining how individuals navigate risks posed to their social identities by major biophysical transformations. This article pointedly analyses narratives of fourteen organ recipients and the four dominant phases of identity management that emerged to create what we have coined as the new 'transplanted self', indicating the varied ways the individual social self emerges in response to the social risks of transplantation. We conclude that a better understanding of the recipient experience will contribute to improved care in the transplantation field.
器官移植的生理风险已有充分记录，但人们对器官接受者在面对生理风险以及移植带来的社会变化时重新定义自我的社会学方式了解较少。本文将移植分析为一种不仅存在生理风险，而且对接受者的社会身份构成风险的过程，并探讨移植接受者如何从等待移植到移植后康复的过程中，在认知上应对移植手术。它建立在以往将风险视为一个社会建构过程的社会学探索基础之上，该过程调解着健康与疾病的体验，并重点解释了个体如何应对重大生物物理转变对其社会身份构成的风险。本文尖锐地分析了14位器官接受者的叙述以及身份管理出现的四个主要阶段，这些阶段共同塑造了我们所称的新“移植自我”，表明个体社会自我因应移植的社会风险而出现的多样方式。我们得出结论，更好地理解接受者的经历将有助于改善移植领域的护理。
