Paper short abstract:

The paper describes the relationships between patients and medical staff in a cancer ward, in order to identify the practices of care. The ethnographic analysis illuminates the gaps, that are created within the biomedical system, gaps within which these practices of care can rise.

Paper long abstract:

The topic of cancer has always been complicated. As Lochlann (2013) notes, cancer is an interconnected relationship that draws on the economic, sentimental, medical, personal, ethical, institutional and the statistical. Cancer in Greece is the third cause of death with 67.401 new cases reported in 2018. The paper is based on 12months ethnographic research carried out in a public anti-cancer hospital in Athens (Greece), including participant observation within a cancer ward and its associated clinic, as well as open-ended interviews with patients, medical practitioners, nurses and several specialists. Deriving from the ethnographic context of this cancer ward, the paper describes the relationships that are developed between the patients and the medical staff in order to identify the meanings, the practices and the politics of care. Since the cancer dehumanizes patients through wounds and sorrow, practices of care not only function as a thick social dynamic that rehumanizes the decomposing bodies and souls, but is further mitigated the social isolation of the disease preventing the patient's social death as social healing. The ethnographic analysis illuminates the gaps, that are created within the biomedical system, gaps within which these practices of care can rise.