Cooperation between Medicine and Sociology in Head and Neck Oncology

Emmanuel Babin (1, 2, 3) , Guillaume Grandazzi (2, 3, 4)

1 Service d'Oto-Rhino-Laryngologie (O.R.L.) et de Chirurgie Cervico-Faciale [CHU Caen]
2 CERREV - Centre d'étude et de recherche sur les risques et les vulnérabilités
3 Cancers et préventions
4 EREN - Espace régional de réflexion éthique de Normandie

Twenty-first-century medicine is facing many challenges-knowledge and command of technical advances, research development, team management, knowledge transmission, and adaptation to economic constraints-without neglecting ''human'' aspects, via transformed carer-patient relationships, social change, and so on. The ''modern'' physicians know that simply treating disease is no longer enough. One of their essential missions lies in offering the individual patient overall care, which implies acknowledging the latter as an individual within a family, social, and professional environment. Indeed, medical practice requires pluridimensional knowledge of the patients' experience of their disease. Yet the contribution sociology can offer to health care remains largely unknown to many physicians, and medical training includes only limited instruction in the human sciences. On the basis of a few observations taken from sociological research, we would like to demonstrate how, in head and neck oncology, interdisci-plinary collaboration between medicine and sociology can prove propitious to improving patient care and attention to their close relations.

Keywords: Sociability; Head and neck cancers; Quality of life

Domains: Sociology; Ethics; Cancer

Emmanuel Babin, Guillaume Grandazzi. Cooperation between Medicine and Sociology in Head and Neck Oncology. Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, 2014, 150 (5), pp.712-715. ⟨10.1177/0194599814521783⟩. ⟨hal-02130273⟩