ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the judgemental labelling of people in hospital care. It summarizes the beginning theory of social judgement as it was evident to it in Howarth ward at a large city teaching hospital. The book describes that the phenomenon of social judgement in some detail and set it into a discussion of the social context where an unequal balance of power is integral to provider-recipient relationships. It suggests that attention to the micropolitics of the patient-care relationship is very important to the understanding of moral questions in health care where decisions are clearly made in relation the context rather than textbook principles. Categories of caring and coping are discussed as an illustration of some of the potential consequences of caring in a climate of judgemental labelling.
