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Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status

BACKGROUND: Little is known about how patients with low socioeconomic status (SES) experience their chronic disease, and how it impacts health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Compared to their more affluent counterparts, worse outcomes have been reported. A better understanding of the domains of HR...

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Autores principales: Van Wilder, Lisa, Pype, Peter, Mertens, Fien, Rammant, Elke, Clays, Els, Devleesschauwer, Brecht, Boeckxstaens, Pauline, De Smedt, Delphine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8598397/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34789153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-021-01578-7
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author Van Wilder, Lisa
Pype, Peter
Mertens, Fien
Rammant, Elke
Clays, Els
Devleesschauwer, Brecht
Boeckxstaens, Pauline
De Smedt, Delphine
author_facet Van Wilder, Lisa
Pype, Peter
Mertens, Fien
Rammant, Elke
Clays, Els
Devleesschauwer, Brecht
Boeckxstaens, Pauline
De Smedt, Delphine
author_sort Van Wilder, Lisa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Little is known about how patients with low socioeconomic status (SES) experience their chronic disease, and how it impacts health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Compared to their more affluent counterparts, worse outcomes have been reported. A better understanding of the domains of HRQoL that are relevant to these specific populations is therefore needed. We explored the experiences of living with a chronic disease in low SES persons. METHODS: A qualitative interview study was performed in Flanders, Belgium. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in chronically ill patients, selected through purposive sampling. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis followed an inductive and iterative approach. RESULTS: Fifteen patients were interviewed. Six major themes were identified: a heavy bag to carry, loss of autonomous life, inner and outer loneliness, emotional imbalance, unmet need for support, and coping strategies. Patients experienced their illness as an additional problem on top of all other problems (i.e. financial/social problems, traumatic life events). In general, the disease burden and non-disease burden were mutually reinforcing, resulting in greater dependency, greater risk of social isolation, greater psychological distress, and greater risk of impaired HRQoL. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to provide detailed insight into the experiences of living with a chronic disease in low SES persons. A conceptual model is proposed that can be used in daily clinical practice to raise awareness among clinicians and health care providers that the patient’s needs go beyond the disease itself. Future research is needed to validate and test the model. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-021-01578-7.
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spelling pubmed-85983972021-11-18 Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status Van Wilder, Lisa Pype, Peter Mertens, Fien Rammant, Elke Clays, Els Devleesschauwer, Brecht Boeckxstaens, Pauline De Smedt, Delphine BMC Fam Pract Research BACKGROUND: Little is known about how patients with low socioeconomic status (SES) experience their chronic disease, and how it impacts health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Compared to their more affluent counterparts, worse outcomes have been reported. A better understanding of the domains of HRQoL that are relevant to these specific populations is therefore needed. We explored the experiences of living with a chronic disease in low SES persons. METHODS: A qualitative interview study was performed in Flanders, Belgium. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in chronically ill patients, selected through purposive sampling. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis followed an inductive and iterative approach. RESULTS: Fifteen patients were interviewed. Six major themes were identified: a heavy bag to carry, loss of autonomous life, inner and outer loneliness, emotional imbalance, unmet need for support, and coping strategies. Patients experienced their illness as an additional problem on top of all other problems (i.e. financial/social problems, traumatic life events). In general, the disease burden and non-disease burden were mutually reinforcing, resulting in greater dependency, greater risk of social isolation, greater psychological distress, and greater risk of impaired HRQoL. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to provide detailed insight into the experiences of living with a chronic disease in low SES persons. A conceptual model is proposed that can be used in daily clinical practice to raise awareness among clinicians and health care providers that the patient’s needs go beyond the disease itself. Future research is needed to validate and test the model. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-021-01578-7. BioMed Central 2021-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8598397/ /pubmed/34789153 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-021-01578-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Van Wilder, Lisa
Pype, Peter
Mertens, Fien
Rammant, Elke
Clays, Els
Devleesschauwer, Brecht
Boeckxstaens, Pauline
De Smedt, Delphine
Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
title Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
title_full Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
title_fullStr Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
title_full_unstemmed Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
title_short Living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
title_sort living with a chronic disease: insights from patients with a low socioeconomic status
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8598397/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34789153
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-021-01578-7
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