Sociological Theories of Defensive Medicine: A Field Study

             The main objective of the study is to reveal the extent of the suitability of the different sociological theoretical visions to analyze the issue of defensive medicine. These visions are represented in three different visions: the role of the patient according to Talcott Parsons, the logical error approach to individual blame, and the perspective of medical ethics. This is done by conducting a field study on a sample of health institutions in Fayoum city. This study belongs to the descriptive analytical studies pattern. Therefore, the researcher relied on the descriptive and statistical approach, and used the questionnaire as a tool to collect data from the study community, and it was applied to a multi-stage random sample of doctors in private and public hospitals, and their number reached 126 individuals, males and females, and the study concluded with a set of results, the most important of which are: The nature of defensive medicine in the research community was determined by a more frequent variable, which is that defensive medicine is “a means of preserving the patient’s life,” which reveals that the goal of doctors in the research community is to preserve the patient’s life. The three sociological perspectives on which the study relied also explained the subject of defensive medicine from the structural, legal, and ethical aspects.