Life experiences of a person with a motor disability in their trajectory through coexisting health care models

Abstract

Introduction: Medical anthropology, in order to understand how people experience illlness and disability, assumes that they acquire a variety of experiences when interacting with the hegemonic medical model, the subordinate alternative model and the self care. These models are seemingly disconnected from each other but they are interconnected in practice, generate concepts about care, illness, disability and ways to deal with it. Objective: Analyze the trajectories and life experiences within the interactions of healthcare models, as described by a person with a motor disability caused by cáncer. Materials and methods; A 42 year old woman (Emma) was selected using judgmental sampling for the richness of her life experiences as a multi-treated “patient” and the trajectories followed in her interacion with care models. Through two semistructured interviews and their transcription, a topic matrix (illness, care, disability) was created to construct and retrospectively analyze the narrative of her trajectories, focusing primarily on her experiencies. Results: Emma acquired knowledge about her illness and critically evaluated the ralative effectiveness of each model and, a the same time, their effects on her person and her sense of life. Conclusions: It is important to know people´s experiencies, their trajectories through the healthcare system, and their expectations; this can help healthcare providers improve the quality and the warmth of the attention.