Opinions of algerian physicians concerning medical care: a fragile occupational identity This paper is aimed at understanding, restitute and analyse the different discourses of Algerian physicians on care activities of three sanitary institutions (hospital paediatric wards, «peripheral» structures and private offices). The paper is focusing on meanings attributed by health practitioners, whose status can be different (specialised and general practitioners), to the various strains within care activities, but concerning also the various social relationships elaborated together with consumers and coworkers. We are attempting to show how much care activities are baffled and trapped, how deviated they are in contact with social reality. All the doctors' frame or reference concerning illlness, medicine, focusing on the technical and scientific dimension, is questioned as it is fully disconnected from the daily medical practice characterized by its feature of «daily do it yourself» and as it reveals a deeply impaired professional identity of the physicians.

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