ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on developments in, and changes in the interrelationships between, medicine and sport and, more particularly, on changes in the relationship between sports physicians and athletes. In 2007 a major investigation into drug use in American baseball revealed that physicians were centrally involved in writing prescriptions for performance-enhancing drugs. Key areas of research within medical sociology include: the behaviour of physicians and medical career structures; the dynamics of doctor–patient relationships; lay referral systems; and the ways in which patients define and make sense of their medical conditions, including their use of medication. The issue of deviant medical careers also raises a number of other issues, including socio-legal processes relating to malpractice issues. It has been suggested that issues relating to physicians’ behaviour and deviant medical careers, doctor–patient relationships in sport, lay referral systems, and athletes’ definitions of their own drug use, would all repay further study.
