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While there is constant emphasis on risk management and patient autonomy in public health strategies, little research has been done until now on the way in which laypeople appropriate the measurement of risk linked to their medicinal consumption. This ethnographic study carried out in France focuses on the choices made by users with various pathologies and the measures and strategies they put in place at different points in their care pathways in order to manage their medicinal consumption. What do they measure (their affliction, the adverse side-effects or the psychosocial risks)? And under what circumstances (based on what knowledge, experiences or discourses)? And following what logics (maximising efficacy, minimising risks or personalising treatments)? The analysis shows that the users appropriate a ‘measurement culture’ that is shared with the medical institution, but that they give prominence to its pitfalls and limits through practices based on personal cognitive constructs.