The Waiting Times Project
Research project looks at the significance of waiting throughout stages of healthcare.
Waiting times
What does it mean to wait now? What does it mean to care now?
Waiting Times is a five-year interdisciplinary project led by Lisa Baraitser at Birkbeck and Laura Salisbury at the University of Exeter. Working across medical humanities and psychosocial studies, we are rethinking the temporalities of healthcare through a critical analysis of waiting in the modern period. We are investigating waiting as a cultural and psychosocial concept, and an embodied and historical experience, in order to better understand the relation between time and care. In an era in which time is lived at increasingly different and complex tempos, we want to understand both the difficulties and vital significance of waiting for practices of care.
What we’re researching:
The project is multi-stranded, embedded in GP surgeries in inner London and rural Devon to investigate ‘watchful waiting'; in a hospice in the South West to investigate experiences of time at the end of life; and in a mental health NHS trust to understand the part played by waiting in psychotherapeutic care. Our historical and cultural work analyses how waiting has been politicised and incorporated into healthcare management. We are also carrying out research focusing on patient experiences to see whether talking about waiting may make it easier to bear. We will analyse how being ‘held up’ includes both being impeded, but also supported and cared for, and how these experiences are structured by class, gender, race, disability, illness and age.
“We will reframe debates about waiting in and for healthcare, moving beyond the urgent need to reduce waiting times in the NHS towards a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between waiting, care and changing experiences of time”
What will the impact be?
"Our findings will be shared via academic publications and media articles, and through conferences and workshops with national and international experts, health professionals, interest groups, and policymakers," explains Professor Lisa Baraitser, Department of Psychosocial Studies.
"Through these we will reframe debates about waiting in and for healthcare, moving beyond the urgent need to reduce waiting times in the NHS towards a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between waiting, care and changing experiences of time. We are also engaging different publics through publically engaged research, art and performance events, workshops, talks, and an e-resource. The aim is to change both academic and public understandings of what ‘timely’ healthcare might be."
Project fact file
- Full project title: Waiting Times
- Funding: £1,272,039 (Collaborative Award)
- Funder: The Wellcome Trust
- Length of award: 1 September 2017 to 31 August 2022
- Supported by: Department of Psychosocial Studies (School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy) and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter
- Project website: Waitingtimes
- Project podcast: Birkbeck Voices
- People- listed below:
- Birkbeck Team: Professor Lisa Baraitser (Joint Principal Investigator), Dr Jordan Osserman and Stephanie Davies, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London.
- Dr Jocelyn Catty, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
- Exeter Team: Professor Laura Salisbury (Joint PI), Dr Martin Moore, Dr Michael J Flexer and Kelechi Anucha, Departments of History and English and Film, University of Exeter
- Artist-researchers: Dr Martin O’Brien; Professor Deborah Robinson