Rehabilitating Time: Multiple Temporalities among Military Clinicians and Patients

Abstract

In this article I explore the different orientations to time experienced by clinicians and patients in the US Armed Forces Amputee Patient Care Program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. In structuring, describing, and working with patients, clinicians rely on a rehabilitative program that is embedded in a narrative notion of time. This approach seeks to embed the grievous wounds patients have sustained along a trajectory of injured to well. Patients are often eager to adopt this approach to their injury but in many cases find that the linear flow of time, upon which this clinical approach relies, is not matched by their experience. Instead the past, the present, and the future can flow together so that patients are simultaneously experiencing these three time orientations. This can create the potential for misunderstanding and conflict between clinicians over adherence and the meaning of a good rehabilitative outcome.