Sorting patients and institutional bad faith: A study of a hospital during the COVID-19 epidemic in France

Maud Gelly

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 367, issue C

Abstract: The COVID-19 epidemic exposed a glaring imbalance between the need for hospitalization and the material and human resources required to meet it. A qualitative study was conducted in a hospital in a region of France overwhelmed by the epidemic in 2020, and this resulting article analyzes how hospital employees came to terms with the shortage of hospital resources. Research reveals the contradictions between the denial of patient sorting by top national leadership and hospital management and its everyday practice by hospital agents in direct contact with the public. Agents who had to sort the sick did not experience a moral dilemma in making these decisions, but those who were not in decision-making positions but had to manage the consequences did. This article contributes to the sociology of sorting by focusing on the practices of agents, being attentive to their moral quandaries and after-the-fact rationalizations in addition to the tactical dimensions of sorting, meaning the concrete local issues to which it responds.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953625001303
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:367:y:2025:i:c:s0277953625001303

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117801

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().