The paper will also look at how simple insurance concepts get translated into insurer practices. Insurance is often described rather neutrally as a device for creating a pool over which the costs of accidental risks are distributed. Moreover, the bureaucratic arrangements common in insurance lead to a splitting of responsibility for avoiding accidents and compensating losses. The rhetoric of responsibility is here supplanted by an administrative logic and a rhetoric of efficiency that mask the moral decisions taken by insurers while highlighting those of policyholders. I envision will be on medical protocols as a quasi-legal system.
Medical protocols exist in a variety of forms.
These protocols play an important role in medical malpractice suits because they make it possible for physicians to defend themselves by claiming that they have met the standard of care currently in place. In developing protocols, physicians seem to be attempting to reclaim contested turf. I anticipate doing fieldwork, interviews, and archival research on the development of protocols.