ABSTRACT
Diagnosis is an exercise of power. Doctors are granted their authority to diagnose, formally by society through its institutions and informally by patients through the consultation. Patients have the freedom to decide what material they bring and doctors use their discretion in how they respond. If they assert their own authority by diagnosing themselves, doctors subject that self-diagnosis to scrutiny and decide whether it’s accurate or inaccurate, desirable or undesirable, to be accepted, contested, or rejected. So, there are many aspects of the consultation that can be given the status of diagnosis. Being aware of this doesn’t generally give us new tasks that have to be squeezed into or extracted from the 10-minute consultation. Rather, they’re ways of thinking about the patient and about the consultation that are useful in answering the questions: ‘What matters about all of this? What’s the problem here? What’s going on?’.
