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Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Changes in health-seeking behaviours and challenges in accessing care have been reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative study examines Australian experiences related to healthcare access during the early months of the pandemic. The study aimed to identify key areas of concern as well...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8535411/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34682432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010687 |
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author | Podubinski, Tegan Townsin, Louise Thompson, Sandra C. Tynan, Anna Argus, Geoff |
author_facet | Podubinski, Tegan Townsin, Louise Thompson, Sandra C. Tynan, Anna Argus, Geoff |
author_sort | Podubinski, Tegan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Changes in health-seeking behaviours and challenges in accessing care have been reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative study examines Australian experiences related to healthcare access during the early months of the pandemic. The study aimed to identify key areas of concern as well as opportunities for services to prevent, manage and treat health concerns when normal access was disrupted. Fifty-nine semi-structured interviews were analysed. Participants were interviewed between August and December in 2020 over telephone or Zoom and were located across Australia. Rapid identification of themes with an audio recordings technique was used to generate themes from the data. Participants described a variety of influences on their health-seeking behaviours, resulting in decisions to delay care or being unable to reach care. Many individuals accessed health services via telehealth and offered a range of perceptions and views on its effectiveness and appropriateness. The findings illustrate that maintenance of health and access to healthcare and psychosocial support were compromised for some individuals, leading to negative impacts on both mental and physical health. This highlights the need to provide mechanisms to facilitate a person’s ability to access care in a timely manner during a pandemic. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8535411 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85354112021-10-23 Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic Podubinski, Tegan Townsin, Louise Thompson, Sandra C. Tynan, Anna Argus, Geoff Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Changes in health-seeking behaviours and challenges in accessing care have been reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. This qualitative study examines Australian experiences related to healthcare access during the early months of the pandemic. The study aimed to identify key areas of concern as well as opportunities for services to prevent, manage and treat health concerns when normal access was disrupted. Fifty-nine semi-structured interviews were analysed. Participants were interviewed between August and December in 2020 over telephone or Zoom and were located across Australia. Rapid identification of themes with an audio recordings technique was used to generate themes from the data. Participants described a variety of influences on their health-seeking behaviours, resulting in decisions to delay care or being unable to reach care. Many individuals accessed health services via telehealth and offered a range of perceptions and views on its effectiveness and appropriateness. The findings illustrate that maintenance of health and access to healthcare and psychosocial support were compromised for some individuals, leading to negative impacts on both mental and physical health. This highlights the need to provide mechanisms to facilitate a person’s ability to access care in a timely manner during a pandemic. MDPI 2021-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8535411/ /pubmed/34682432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010687 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Podubinski, Tegan Townsin, Louise Thompson, Sandra C. Tynan, Anna Argus, Geoff Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title | Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_full | Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_fullStr | Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_short | Experience of Healthcare Access in Australia during the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic |
title_sort | experience of healthcare access in australia during the first year of the covid-19 pandemic |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8535411/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34682432 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010687 |
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