Exploring health inequities through the actor-network theory lens.

Social theory plays an important role in the nursing discipline and nursing inquiry as it helps conceptually embed nursing in the larger picture of the social world. For example, a broad category of critical theory provides a unique lens for uncovering social conditions of inequity and oppression. Among the sociological theories, actor-network theory (ANT) is an approach to research and analysis that has recently gained interest among nurse philosophers and researchers. Studies guided by ANT seek to understand phenomena of interest as constituted within the relationships between human and nonhuman actors to understand how care practices are co-created/enacted and how they can be made more humane. In this paper, we describe the benefits of ANT for examining healthcare access for incarcerated individuals with life-limiting illnesses accessing palliative care and for people using illicit drugs. We argue that attention to the materiality of care practices can contribute to efforts of advancing health equity for these groups.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Nursing Philosophy

• Publication date

  2024-09-19

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/nup.12504PMID 39297733
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Clinical outcomes and health care costs among people entering a safer opioid supply program in Ontario

  2022cited by this paper
• Harms and Contributors of Leaving Against Medical Advice in Patients With Infective Endocarditis

  2022cited by this paper
• Characterizing safer supply prescribing of immediate release hydromorphone for individuals with opioid use disorder across Ontario, Canada.

  2022cited by this paper
• Why Do Patients Leave against Medical Advice? Reasons, Consequences, Prevention, and Interventions

  2021cited by this paper
• A genealogy of what nurses know about 'the good death': A socio-materialist perspective.

  2021cited by this paper
• "People need them or else they're going to take fentanyl and die": A qualitative study examining the 'problem' of prescription opioid diversion during an overdose epidemic.

  2021cited by this paper
• ‘Safer opioid distribution’ as an essential public health intervention for the opioid mortality crisis – Considerations, options and examples towards broad-based implementation

  2020cited by this paper
• Becoming Institutionalized: Incarceration as a Chronic Health Condition

  2020cited by this paper
• Tackling the overdose crisis: The role of safe supply

  2020cited by this paper
• Strategies used by people who inject drugs to avoid stigma in healthcare settings.

  2019cited by this paper
• Towards a Guiding Framework for Prison Palliative Care Nursing Ethics.

  2019cited by this paper
• The significance of overlooked objects: Materiality and care at home for people with dementia.

  2019cited by this paper
• Negative experiences of pain and withdrawal create barriers to abscess care for people who inject heroin. A mixed methods analysis.

  2018cited by this paper
• On Actor-Network Theory. A Few Clarifications, Plus More Than a Few Complications

  2017cited by this paper
• Hospitals as a 'risk environment': an ethno-epidemiological study of voluntary and involuntary discharge from hospital against medical advice among people who inject drugs.

  2014cited by this paper
• Supermax as a Technology of Punishment

  2014cited by this paper
• Readmission Rates of Patients Discharged against Medical Advice: A Matched Cohort Study

  2011cited by this paper
• Actor-Network Theory: sensitive terms and enduring tensions

  2010cited by this paper
• Growing old in prison?: A review of national and international research on Ageing Offenders

  2010cited by this paper
• Leaving Against Medical Advice (AMA): Risk of 30-Day Mortality and Hospital Readmission

  2010cited by this paper
• Living with diabetes: care beyond choice and control.

  2009cited by this paper
• For personal use . Mass reproduce only with permission from Mayo Clinic Proceedings . “ I ’ m Going Home ” : Discharges Against Medical Advice

  2009cited by this paper
• Acute Pain Management for Patients Receiving Maintenance Methadone or Buprenorphine Therapy

  2006cited by this paper
• Regulating opioid prescribing through prescription monitoring programs: balancing drug diversion and treatment of pain.

  2004cited by this paper
• What happens to patients who leave hospital against medical advice?

  2003cited by this paper
• Space, place and movement as aspects of health care in three women's prisons.

  2003cited by this paper
• Mutual mistrust in the medical care of drug users

  2002cited by this paper
• Mutual Mistrust in the Medical Care of Drug Users: The Keys to the “Narc” Cabinet

  2002cited by this paper
• The potential contributions of critical social theory to nursing science.

  2000cited by this paper
• Neonatal Food and the Politics of Theory: Some Questions of Method

  1996cited by this paper

• Social Theory in Nursing Scholarship, From Humanism to Post‐Humanism: Revisiting S. Nairn on the Structure–Agency Debate

  2025cites this paper
• Guest editor's closing of the annual special collection, 27th International Nursing Philosophy Conference proceedings in association with IPONS: Reimagining a nursing ecosystem in an uncertain world.

  2024cites this paper