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Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway

This article describes and analyzes conceptions of equal access to healthcare by health workers and Sub Saharan African women living in Norway. The main objective of the study was to find out if there is equal access to healthcare as understood by both the provider and receiver side of healthcare. T...

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Autor principal: Lien, Inger-Lise
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8432872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34506476
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255934
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author Lien, Inger-Lise
author_facet Lien, Inger-Lise
author_sort Lien, Inger-Lise
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description This article describes and analyzes conceptions of equal access to healthcare by health workers and Sub Saharan African women living in Norway. The main objective of the study was to find out if there is equal access to healthcare as understood by both the provider and receiver side of healthcare. The two sides have different positions from where to observe and judge the services given, which can give a broader understanding of the healthcare system. Do Sub Saharan African women find healthcare services unjust and discriminating? Do health workers share conceptions of access held by these women? This study used a qualitative fieldwork research design. One hundred interviews were done with health workers and 55 interviews were done with Somali, Gambian and Eritrean women who all had experienced female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). The study found a mismatch in the conceptions of access to healthcare between health workers and the women. Health workers did not believe there was equal access to healthcare and were critical of how the system functioned, whereas the women trusted the system and believed there was equal access. However, both sides had corresponding views on the following challenges facing the healthcare system: little time available to identify symptoms, difficulties in navigating the system, difficulties in getting referrals, and some negative adjudication by some health workers. Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and hysteresis, and candidacy theory were used to analyze the collected data. It was concluded that health workers and the women based their experiences of healthcare on differing cultural frames and expectations. The women seemed to base their assessments of healthcare on previous experiences from their home country, while health workers based their understanding from experiences within the system.
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spelling pubmed-84328722021-09-11 Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway Lien, Inger-Lise PLoS One Research Article This article describes and analyzes conceptions of equal access to healthcare by health workers and Sub Saharan African women living in Norway. The main objective of the study was to find out if there is equal access to healthcare as understood by both the provider and receiver side of healthcare. The two sides have different positions from where to observe and judge the services given, which can give a broader understanding of the healthcare system. Do Sub Saharan African women find healthcare services unjust and discriminating? Do health workers share conceptions of access held by these women? This study used a qualitative fieldwork research design. One hundred interviews were done with health workers and 55 interviews were done with Somali, Gambian and Eritrean women who all had experienced female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). The study found a mismatch in the conceptions of access to healthcare between health workers and the women. Health workers did not believe there was equal access to healthcare and were critical of how the system functioned, whereas the women trusted the system and believed there was equal access. However, both sides had corresponding views on the following challenges facing the healthcare system: little time available to identify symptoms, difficulties in navigating the system, difficulties in getting referrals, and some negative adjudication by some health workers. Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and hysteresis, and candidacy theory were used to analyze the collected data. It was concluded that health workers and the women based their experiences of healthcare on differing cultural frames and expectations. The women seemed to base their assessments of healthcare on previous experiences from their home country, while health workers based their understanding from experiences within the system. Public Library of Science 2021-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8432872/ /pubmed/34506476 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255934 Text en © 2021 Inger-Lise Lien https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lien, Inger-Lise
Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway
title Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway
title_full Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway
title_fullStr Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway
title_full_unstemmed Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway
title_short Health workers and Sub Saharan African women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in Norway
title_sort health workers and sub saharan african women’s understanding of equal access to healthcare in norway
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8432872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34506476
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255934
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