Shame and Medicine Project, 2021-2024

The Shame and Medicine Project investigated the experiences of shame and self-conscious emotions within the context of contemporary healthcare.

The project explored National Health Service settings and took place in England between June 2020 and February 2026. It involved patients, medical students, and doctors (including general practitioners, those working in hospital settings, and those with experience of the General Medical Council disciplinary procedures). Participants were asked to complete a number of structured Emotional Experience Diary entries detailing a time when they had experienced shame or self-consciousness in healthcare settings. Following this, participants were invited to attend a semi-structured interview to discuss the experiences described in their diary entries in greater detail.

The collection consists of the Emotional Experience Diary entries and interviews of those participants who consented to the archiving of their data. The total dataset involved 265 participants, which included 120 patients, 72 qualified doctors, and 73 medical students. These created 1047 diary entries and undertook 116 interviews. They were all from England. Of these, 95 patients (134 diary entries and 20 semi-structured interviews), 51 doctors (312 diary entries and 41 semi-structured interviews), and 58 medical students (331 diary entries and 20 semi-structured interviews) agreed to their data being made available on the Data Service.