Search results

This paper aims to explore consumer experiences of spiritual value and investigates whether it is distinct from ethical value within a large and growing private sector health-care setting. Understanding consumers’ experiences of spiritual value versus ethical value has important implications for corporate social responsibility as increasingly, consumers want their spiritual needs met.

The research adopts an exploratory case study approach using in-depth interviews with 16 consumers who use complementary and alternative medicine health-care services. Drawing on consumer value frameworks, a thematic analysis identified dimensions of spiritual and ethical values co-created during their consumption experiences.

From a consumer’s perspective, spiritual value is distinct from ethical value. The key finding is that participants talked about spiritual value predominantly in reactive terms (apprehending, appreciating, admiring or responding), whereas ethical value was referred to as active (taking action).

This paper enhances the understanding of spiritual value and provides evidence that people want their spiritual needs met in a private health-care context. Furthermore, this study provides insights into the consumption experience of spiritual value that can be considered, with further research, in other health-care and service contexts.

This paper offers a new view on corporate social responsibility by taking a consumer’s perspective, and identifying that consumer experiences of spiritual value are important and distinct from ethical value.

This article explores alternative medicine choices within the context of the purchaser/provider separation. The changes that draw attention to the desires of patients may require managers to rethink their contracting process. The problems relating to alternative medicine choice are discussed and include the resistance of the medical profession, the lack of hard scientific evidence of benefit, the acceptability of some alternative medicine practices, the perceived acceptance of alternative medicine, should it become an integral component of service provision and the issue of management control. The response to alternative medicine in other European countries is briefly mentioned.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a topic of research and as an approach within the health care delivery system has become increasingly accepted. Aided by the holistic movement, and after a century and a half of striving for legitimacy, CAM is also increasingly becoming more accepted by mainstream medicine. This chapter reviews the social sources of disparities in use of CAM, with a greater focus on English-speaking countries, and especially the US. This chapter will briefly highlight the basic underlying principles of CAM as linked to its history and discuss types of CAM. The major focus of this chapter will be a review of the literature on social factors and use of CAM, looking at such factors as age, gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and immigration status, and health status. As part of this, we will also discuss the integration of CAM and conventional care. In conclusion, future directions for social science research in CAM will be discussed, specifically elaborating on the importance of the social sciences linking CAM with other growing interests in health and wellness.

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of social suffering among a non-random sample of Canadian women working in socially and economically marginalized “frontline” service occupations. Participants identified a number of health concerns that they link to the everyday suffering they endure – i.e. feeling inadequate, incompetent, lonely, self-conscious, disenfranchised or dissatisfied. The complex etiology of these women's suffering bars many from finding appropriate health care. As a result, there are health disparities among our vulnerable populations. While they often articulated a desire for alternative/complementary care, the Canadian health care system does not currently fund these services and many of the women are unable to afford the out-of-pocket costs.

This study aims to assess the accessibility of women to health-care facilities in the rural areas with a view to unties possible recommendation of enhancing its service delivery. It provides an insight into the levels of satisfaction of the services provided by conventional health-care providers in the area where the majority in the developing countries concentrated. The study unravels the reasons for the low patronage of regular health-care facilities to boost unscientific ones by rural women.

The study relies on extensive field work conducted in the study area mainly rural nature. data was sourced by questionnaire, mainly administered on the women in the area and field observation. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics.

The paper provides information on the low socio-economic attributes of rural women. It is further showed that medical facilities and personnel were not relatively available and performed in health-care centres to the satisfaction of the users. Poor roads, poor human relation, low quality of services, inadequate medical personnel and drug shortage hindrance to women accessing appropriate health-care facilities in the rural areas. Rural women, therefore, opted for self-medication folk medicine, disguising and spiritual remedies. Health-care facilities suffered poor patronage as a result of these obstacles The study recommended proper overhauling of health-care facilities.

The paper builds a relationship on the reasons for health-care facilities neglect in the rural area in developing countries and revealed unscientific means by which health care needs are realised rural women.

Background. High and variable rates of attendance at GP consultations in prisons are observed. The aim of the study is to have a clearer understanding of social factors influencing inmates’ help‐seeking behaviour and demand for primary health care. Methods. A qualitative study was carried out in five Belgian prisons (three Dutch‐speaking and two French‐speaking). Twenty‐five male inmates were interviewed face‐to‐face and 18 caregivers (7 nurses and 11 GPs) in focus groups. Results. Five main social factors explain inmates’ help‐seeking behaviour and demand for primary health care: (1) inmates’ negative perception of imprisonment increases help‐seeking behaviour; (2) inmates use their rights to health care as strategies to maintain some form of control over their lives; (3) the doctor’s role distorts expression of need and demand; (4) health professionals’ control over inmates’ lives creates mistrust and a controlling therapeutic relationship; and (5) lack of alternatives to health care. These factors are mutually dependent and cause a confrontation in the inmates’ and clinicians’ agendas. Conclusion. The most important recommendation is to understand what the inmates are really seeking in their demands. This information can be used to develop appropriate alternatives in terms of human support and well‐being facilities. The therapeutic and security roles of health care workers should be separated, in order to increase the trust that is central to the therapeutic relationship between them and inmates.

There are longstanding concerns about the sustainability of the US health care system. Payment reform has been seen over the last decade as a key strategy to reorienting the US health care system around value. Alternative payment models (APMs) that seek to accomplish this goal have become increasingly prevalent in the US, yet there is a perception that physicians are resistant to their use and that organizations have been slow to adopt such models. The reasons for the limited effectiveness of APM programs are multifactorial and include aspects related to the design and implementation of these programs and lack of alignment and coordination across different payers and health care sectors. Most importantly, however, is that the current organizational structures in US health care serve to dampen the direct impact of these incentives, often because health care delivery organizations face conflicting incentives themselves. Organizations filter and refine the incentives from multiple external payment contracts and develop internal incentive systems that best reflect the amalgamation of the incentives embedded across their contracts, and thus the fragmented nature of the US health care system serves to undermine efforts to transform care under value-based contracts. In addition to organizations having conflicting incentives, there also are fundamental problems with the design and implementation of APMs that hinder their acceptance among physicians and the organizations in which they work. Moreover, much remains to be learned about how organizations can best adapt to succeed under these models, and how organizational culture can be leveraged to transform care.

This review aimed to identify and map published studies on self-care practices to manage common acute health conditions in the Philippines.

The authors conducted a scoping review in PubMed, Scopus, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), ProQuest Central, Journal Storage (JSTOR) and the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development – Health Research and Development Information Network (HERDIN). The authors included all studies on self-care practices to manage common acute conditions, namely low back pain, allergic rhinitis, general acute pain, cough, cold, diarrhea, constipation and stress, published up to 2021 in the Philippines. Information on the article type, aim of the study, study design and setting, population characteristics and size, and self-practices employed for the conditions were extracted and synthesized.

The authors identified various self-care practices for acute conditions among the general population and indigenous peoples in the Philippines from 26 studies included in the review: the use of medicines with and without a prescription, appropriate and inappropriate antibiotic use, use of medicinal plants and other traditional and alternative therapies and products, recreational activities and healthy habits and behaviors, and self-management or seeking care from traditional healers (albularyo or manggagamot) or health professionals. A number of considerations influenced their decision on how to manage symptoms, including perceived severity of the condition, availability and perceived effectiveness of treatment, cost, and advice from trusted sources of health information.

The authors searched five major databases and a local research database, but some studies may still have been missed in the review. The review also excluded intervention studies on the outcomes of self-care, which limits the authors' ability to make conclusions on the effectiveness of the different modalities of self-care.

Filipinos engage in a variety of “safe” (or evidence-informed) and “unsafe” (or harmful) self-care practices. While the term “self-care” is not routinely used by the general population and health providers, it is widely enculturated and practiced in the Philippines. Self-care benefits individuals and the health system, but there are also practices that increase risk of adverse outcomes and death including inappropriate antibiotic use, prescription sharing and reuse, and delays in seeking adequate treatment from a health professional. To leverage on self-care in advancing Universal Health Coverage (UHC) goals, the authors recommend a national strategy that provides guidance on how to practice responsible self-care, further research on the effectiveness and safety of alternative medicine and other priority areas, and better integration of self-care in the formal education and health systems. The authors also propose that the research agenda on self-care include acute health conditions, given their impact and burden on health and the economy.

This is the first published review of self-care practices for managing common acute health conditions, which captured practices of various groups and populations including indigenous peoples.

In the USA, there has recently been an unprecedented convergence of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) with mainstream biomedical care. This confluence may lead to a deeply rooted philosophical conflict. This qualitative study works to identify factors that health-care leaders can use, which will build a pathway to greater integrative practice between medical doctors and CAM practitioners – from parallel existence to partnership – by examining the tensions between biomedical medicine and naturopathic medicine. The purpose of this study is to offer short-term suggestions for partnership and long-term recommendations for better understanding.

An original qualitative study using semi-structured with CAM practitioners and biomedical practitioners.

Areas of conflict that are preventing synergy are identified and a pathway for health-care leaders to follow to create greater integration and partnerships is suggested.

This is a qualitative and exploratory study that has significant limitations on generalizability.

This study suggest steps that both types of health-care practitioners can take to increase their success at working together on an individual level, a group level, an organizational level and on an industry-wide basis, as well as provide a specific pathway to create greater integrative practice for health-care leaders.

The results indicate that stronger partnerships between different types of medical practitioners increase patient choice, patient satisfaction and outcomes.

Increasing interested in CAM modalities is driving more contact between CAM practitioners and biomedical practitioners. This contact is best established in partnership between practitioners rather than in parallel. This original research outlines the sources of conflict and provides recommendations for encouraging greater synergy.

To assist in achieving cost effective health care allocations in a collective choice setting, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a tool not common in the public budgeting literature but is common in the health economics literature.

Through a meta-analysis of the health care spending literature that computed the value of quality-adjusted life years, the authors provide an alternative approach for budgeters and policymakers.

The authors provide an alternative approach for budgeters and policymakers for weighing the benefits of alternative health care spending allocations.

The authors introduce an alternative approach for weighing the benefits of alternative health care spending allocations. As a tool for budgeting professionals, cost per QALY allows for the opportunity to raise cost-effectiveness of public health expenditures as a tool for governments to allocate resources based on outcomes, rather than inputs.