‘I had to go to the hospital and it was freaking me out’: Needle phobic encounter space

Recent research in the geography of health care moves beyond distributive concerns focusing more sensitively on the nature of health care settings. As part of this, a growing number of studies explore the importance of individuals' personal circumstances on their emplaced experiences and agency. Extending this line of inquiry, and drawing on ideas in emotional geographies, the current study illustrates how experiences and agency can be impacted profoundly by needle phobia. Interviews with 11 self-identifying sufferers explore the physical, emotional, behavioral and spatial manifestations of their condition. Specifically how their fear of, and reactions to, clinical objects and procedures (needles and their insertion by health professionals into the body) and health care settings (that possess the risk of encountering or host the encounters with, these objects and procedures), can combine as a single spatial affect.