Health Care Seeking Behavior Essay

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1.1Back ground: The processes involved in making decision to seek health care are not’ fully Understood. According to Harris and Gutman any behavior of individuals that promotes, protects or maintains one’s health regardless of actual or perceived health status is known as health care seeking behavior (2).

Health seeking behavior is preceded by a decision making process that is further governed by individual and/or household behavior, community norms and expectations as well as provider related characteristics and behavior. For this reason the nature of health care seeking is not homogenous depending on cognitive and non-cognitive factors that call for a contextual analysis of health care seeking behavior. Context may be a factor of cognition or awareness, socio-cultural as well as economic factors. The interplay of these factors is central in the final choice of a care seeking option. This interplays such that no one option is selected and we may

Statement of the problem

It is important to realize that western scientific men provide only small proportion of health care in most countries of the world. Medical manpower is often a scarce resource with most health care taking place beyond their jurisdiction (1).

Just as illness is not evenly distributed across population neither is the use of health services. To understand the use of health services one must understand not only how people interpret their symptoms but also how they perceived the medical system and whether or not they have access to it. In general, when a person undertakes activities for a feeling and defining an illness and seeking relief from it is known as illness behavior (2). Although the exact process involved in making the decision to obtain health care is not fully understood at present, enough data is available to support a relationship between individuals’ interpretations of deviation in physical functioning and social and psychological factors