Home Care in Thailand A Qualitative Study of Patients‟ Experience of Being Cared in Their Own Home

Sammanfattning: This study is sponsored by Minor Field Study (MFS) scholarships from the University of Borås, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). Thailand is a densely populated developing country situated in Asia. The relatives are the most important social network in Thailand. People all over the world, including Thai people are in need of aftercare when they have left the hospital. In Thailand this care mostly executed by relatives.There is not much research done that shows the patient‟s perspective of home care in Thailand so it is important to do this study. The aim of the study is to illuminate the Thai patients‟ perspective of being cared in their own home. The qualitative interviews were made with six patients at a hospital in Bangkok. The authors had one in beforehand-prepared question, but had to put in some stimulating questions in all of the interviews. To describe and analyze the result the authors did qualitative content analysis. The criteria to take part in this study were that the interviewees were Thai, over 25 years old and had experiences of being cared in their own home, by relatives or by professionals.The result is presented with meanings units, codes, sub-categories, categories and content areas. The content areas are; the patient does not experience any problems with home care and the patient experience problems with home care. The categories are good experiences and naturally and hard experiences. The authors then made sub-categories and named them; safety, family as caregiver is expected, solidarity, grateful, sense of guilt, insecure and hard to be dependent.The authors found out that all the interviewees experienced home care as something naturally, when it is a part of life to be cared by your relatives in Thailand. This expression fits in under the first content area, but some of the interviewees also expressed feelings that fit in under the opposite content area. In the end of the study the authors discusses different choices that they have done, and the consequences that followed with them, in a discussion of the method. Even the use of an interpreter is discussed in this part. In the discussion of the result the authors discusses the most interesting parts of the result and verify this with references from scientific articles. One thing that the authors found out was that home care in Thailand can be expressed with both positive and negative experiences from the same person.