Paper short abstract:

I will explore the personal and relational implications for young patients with diabetes when seeking ‘care’ in the adults' unit. This clinical space invokes compliance and passiveness within a landscape populated by others' diseased and incomplete bodies.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Santiago de Chile during 2014, this paper examines the experiences of young people with type 1 diabetes (T1D) when seeking care at the adults' outpatient diabetes unit. When young people are moved to adult care, they face for the first time a clinical environment that seems hostile and disease-focused. The adults' unit constitutes a shared space in which clinicians provide care for young people with T1D, as well as for older adults and the elderly who have developed serious diabetes complications. For young people, this unit is populated by "old, incomplete, chopped bodies", which embody the threat of diabetes complications. I will argue that in this space of care, young people's previously 'empowered' and 'autonomous' selves are threatened, needing to be re-constructed in opposition to "others" (patients and clinicians). This is a space they dread visiting as they constantly find themselves explaining which type of diabetes they have and what sort of patients they are: "They treat you as if one was a bad patient, one of those who are stubborn and don't take care of themselves" (making reference to those with complications). Through this paper I will question the social, moral and emotional implications for young patients inserted in a public health system, which does not seem to respond to their particular needs. Here, official discourses of care, empowerment and autonomy, are translated into practice through compliance and passiveness. I will do this by highlighting young people's narratives of disappointment, distress and dissatisfaction.