非專業諮詢及轉介在求醫過程中所扮演的角色
Other Title
The Role of Lay Consultation and Referral in the Process of Health Seeking
Date Issued
1998-07-31
Date
1998-07-31
Author(s)
丁志音
DOI
872412H002004
Abstract
Under the paradigm of social network,
a set of concepts have been developed to investigate the way lay persons affect the
process of health seeking, among which “lay
consultation and referral” is perhaps the most
widely discussed. The present study attempts
to explore preliminarily the patterns of
relations and interactions between
individuals’ social networks and persons who
provided consultation and/or referral
suggestions. Qualitative data for this study
came from in-depth interviewings with 60
OPD patients or their families and 3
hospitalized patients in one medical center
and a clinic. The major findings are:
1. In modern societies, lay consultation and
referral is still prevailing even while the
access to information has increasingly
institutionalized and relying on technology,
and the provision of health services tends to
commercialize and apply marketing
strategies. It is considered particularly
important for individuals to locate a person
or persons who can provide advice or
guidance while necessary. In general, the
greater the uncertainty and the severer the
problem are more likely to lead to lay
consultation and referral.
2. The role of kinship or primary social
network has gradually depleted and networks
of the work places and other secondary social
networks are becoming of greater importance
for help seeking.
3. In general, individuals with the following
characteristics tend to be consulted: (1) who
are health professionals or who have training
in medicine/health-related fields, (2) who are
non health professionals but belong to
networks in which health professionals are
quite commonly seen, (3) who have much
experience in seeking help for certain kind of
health problems.
4. In addition to the consultations between
acquaintants, conferring with strangers can
also be made occasionally in certain
situations, from asking questions from
personnels and other patients in major
hospitals to consulting shamans who can
communicate with supernatural forces to
provide guidance to their clients.
5. Lay consultation and referral has the
following functions:
(1) To integrate available social resources to
cope with uncertainty and solve the
problems.
(2) To help the clients become aware of as
best as possible all solutions which are
available our health care system. This is
particularly true while the members of
one’s social networks are relatively
heterogeneous and have diversified
experiences in dealing with health
problems. As a result, the clients may
be motivated to trying “alternative”
solutions which had never been used
before.
(3) The special relations between the one
who consult (the client) and who is
consulted may be helpful when the
patient interacts with recommended
healer. The patient and families may
consider that a better treatment can be
acquired due to relationship between the
consulted and the healer. Indeed, in
some cases quality of care was deemed
assured due to the special triadic
relationships between the client, the
consulted, and the healer.
While only a very limited amount of referrals
are made by health professionals within health care organizations, the majority
occurred in daily life settings made by non-professionals
through social networks.
Interdisciplinary, empirical investigations
should be encouraged in the future to
improve the state-of-the-art of this area
which is currently under researched.
Subjects
health seeking behavior
social
network
network
lay consultation and referral
Publisher
臺北市：國立臺灣大學公共衛生學院公共衛生學系
Type
report
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
872412H002004.pdf
Size
34.5 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):fbc62aa9b4e5a11cd157df0b22f1f852