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Reasons for consultation and explanations of illness among Finnish primary‐care patients
Author(s) -
Punamaki RaijaLeena,
Kokko Simo J.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10934481
Subject(s) - psychosocial , interpretation (philosophy) , construct (python library) , psychology , sociology of health and illness , medicine , quarter (canadian coin) , everyday life , psychiatry , nursing , social psychology , health care , epistemology , law , computer science , philosophy , archaeology , political science , history , programming language
The aim of this study is to describe triggers to consultation, and to further understanding of how patients construct explanations for what is wrong with them. Patients consulting a general practitioner were interviewed about the process that had led to their consultation and explanations for the causes of their illness. The results show that the factors which trigger professional consultation are related to the everyday demands of work, home and other people on the one hand, and to the interpretation of bodily symptoms on the other. Characteristically, symptom interpretation often involves a veiled dialogue with the tax‐funded municipal health care system about a justification for the lay diagnosis. The results further show a domination of biomedical illness explanations among the patients studied. A third of the explanations concerned infectious, toxic and noxious agents, and a quarter constitutional defects in the body. Ten per cent were philosophical and metaphysical, and 16 per cent psychosocial in nature. The remainder were based on life style and risk behaviour, and on problems of medical care. The results are discussed from the standpoint of lay and professional models of explanation for illness.