Programme full

Treasured Islands: The Role of the Hair Salon in Dementia Care
Ward, R., Campbell, S.
(University of Stirling)
Wednesday 15 April 2015 16:00 - 17:30
PAPER SESSION 3
This paper will report on a 28-month, ESRC funded study of the management of appearance in dementia care. As the
name implies, the Hair and Care project paid particular attention to hair care and stylization and the relationships in
which it is embedded. Using a qualitatively-led mix of methods a particular focus of our attention were the often
temporarily designated 'salon' spaces in settings such as care homes, hospitals and day centres. Carved out against
the backdrop of healthcare service delivery, the salon offers participants a 'knowable' and culturally meaningful setting
that resonates with long-standing biographical hairdressing practices and salon attendance.
Our focus for this paper is upon the salon as a social and material space and the role it plays within dementia care
and in the lives of the people who visit regularly to participate in it. In light of the often temporary nature of the hair
salon within care settings, an over-arching question that we pursued throughout the study was: 'what makes a salon, a
salon?' Our discussion of findings will address this question and outline our efforts to find an answer that draws upon
notions of 'place-making' and recent thinking on space and place that recognises the closely intertwined and mutually
constitutive relationship between the social and the material captured by notions of the 'place-event'.
Medicine, Health and Illness 1
C236, CHARLES OAKLEY BUILDING
Navigating Uncertainty in Practice: The Role of Instruments for Screening Cognitive Function and Diagnosing
Alzheimer’s Disease
Swallow, J.
(University of Leeds)
The 'ageing population' in the UK has firmly established the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as a site for
concern in social policy and medical research and practice (DoH 2012; MRC NMHB, 2014). Despite the plethora of
technological, innovative techniques in research such as biomarker technologies (Zetterberg, 2010), there is
continued reliance in healthcare policy (Dementia Commissioning for Quality and Innovation Framework) and clinical
practice on the use of relatively simple cognitive screening tools. Diagnosing AD however, is uncertain; a definitive
diagnosis can only be made at post-mortem examination and its nosological framework is contested (Hardy, 2006).
This paper explores the role of cognitive screening tools in this arena of uncertainty.
The presented ethnographic data, including observations of consultations and team meetings and interviews across
clinical and policy practice investigates how clinicians and policymakers utilise cognitive screening tools towards
navigating a diagnosis of AD in clinical practice. Concurrently, exploring how healthcare practice(s) are mobilised
towards formally classifying and diagnosing AD. Preliminary analysis has highlighted key themes 1) Diagnostic
classification as negotiation of formal and informal classification systems with diagnosis rarely 'disposed' 2) Patients
as active participants in their diagnosis; legitimising memory loss through formal classification and the use of
screening tools 3) Reluctance by clinicians to quantify cognitive decline through the outcome of tools in practice and
policy; privileging clinical judgement.
Overall, the theoretical framework of 'technology-in-practice' (Mol, 2002; Latimer, 2013) is being utilised to expand on
the complexity faced by clinicians of diagnosing and constituting AD.
Diagnosing Dementia with Care: Memory Clinics and the Accomplishment of Interactional Ethics
Hillman, A.
(Cardiff University)
Traditional bioethics and its key principles remain the dominant ethical discourse of medical professionals and health
services. Within this discourse individuals are constituted as 'free', rational and asocial. This paper presents
interactional encounters that occur between clinicians, patients and families in memory clinics to show how such
encounters produce ethics that are profoundly interactional. Interactions that occur in the building of a dementia
diagnosis and in the communication of it, reveal a complex set of relations between patients, families and clinicians
that produce ethics that are situated and emergent rather than abstract and fixed. Patients and families are never
passive recipients of information, instead decisions about the causes of a patient's memory problems are collectively
made. As a result, patients and families inform clinician's decision making regarding what kind of information is
shared, when that information is shared and in what form. These negotiations open up space for a logic of care (Mol
121 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University