Mcdonaldization: Health In A Fastfood Society

McDonaldization: Health in A Fastfood Society

McDonaldization, is the term Ritzer derived from the McDonalds' fast food chain to describe the state of our society. Ritzer claims our social institutions have become completely dehumanized in the form of a bureaucracy.
Health care is an example of one institution that is characterized by the four components of bureaucracy: efficiency, predictability, control and quantification. In the past, health care was more simplistic in nature. House calls were no unheard of, and doctors knew all of their patients and their families on a personal level. The doctor who delivered your parents would deliver you as well as your future children. Follow-ups were quite normal; doctors were concerned with
When prescriptions are required you get the prescription filled, pay a lot of money (unless you have a drug plan or additional medical coverage), and listen to the same warnings about finishing all of the prescriptions, side-affects, the dangers of interacting drugs and alcohol, and the instructions stickered on the side of the bottle. The fourth component of control is very important in the health care industry. Doctors and nurses have control over our health and physical well being. Although doctors do not have the same kind of power and responsibility that they had in the past, their influence is still tremendous. Just by forcing you to sit and wait for another person exhibits their control over you. Doctors have supreme control in such places as the emergency room. They determine which patient is more critical than the others are. By making this decision they are choosing who will get treated first. In the end this decision could mean the difference between life and death. Yet another area of control is organ transplants. Doctors must evaluate each case carefully. Once a possible donor is found a doctor may then try to influence the patient's family that harvesting the organs would mean other
This change from human to robot-like health care workers has come in the face of a demand for efficiency and quantification. It is hard to say who is victimized most by this dehumanization; the doctors who must deny their humanity or their patients who must go to them for treatment. In conclusion when one applies the four components of McDonaldization to our present health care system one discovers that they are aptly applicable.
Quantification is seen when one thinks about how our medical identity is comprised of a series of different numbers. Efficiency is supposed to occur with phone-in prescriptions and appointments. Control is assured by a doctor's capacity to make life or death decisions. As for predictability it is common knowledge as to what routine one follows to receive treatment. The irrationality is how impersonal and inefficient the whole system can become through overworked doctors and other professionals. The iron cage is how the patients of these stressed doctors feel from these doctors' ignorance and neglect. In all it is true that the health care system is one social institution that does successfully meet all of Ritzer's requirements for a
McDonaldized