Revisiting rural healthcare access through Held’s ethics of care

Access to healthcare and health seeking behaviours of rural people often hinge on the existing relationships between healthcare providers and (prospective) healthcare users. However, rich micro-level health professional-healthcare user relationships and the unique relational context of rural setting...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social theory & health 2023-06, Vol.21 (2), p.178-193
Main Authors: Quilliam, Claire, Glenister, Kristen, Ervin, Kaye, Weller-Newton, Jennifer
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affordability
Availability
Ethics
Feminism
Feminist theory
Health behavior
Health care
Health care access
Health care industry
Health services
Health services utilization
Help seeking behavior
Individualism
Interdependence
Medical personnel
Medical Sociology
Original Article
Rural areas
Rural health care
Social Sciences
Social Theory
Sociology
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Summary:Access to healthcare and health seeking behaviours of rural people often hinge on the existing relationships between healthcare providers and (prospective) healthcare users. However, rich micro-level health professional-healthcare user relationships and the unique relational context of rural settings are largely missing from dominant rural healthcare access conceptual frameworks. We argue rural healthcare access conceptualisations require revisiting from a relational perspective to ensure future healthcare access policy accounts for the relational nature of healthcare in rural contexts. Ethics of care is a moral theory informed by feminism which rejects liberal individualist notions and emphasises interdependence. We used Held’s ethics of care characteristics to examine Russell and colleagues’ healthcare access framework and dimensions for rural and remote populations. This process revealed Held’s ethics of care characteristics are only somewhat evident across Russell et al.’s dimensions: most evident in the acceptability and accommodation dimensions, and most absent in the availability and affordability dimensions. Future rural healthcare access frameworks need to pay further attention to the relational aspects of rural healthcare, particularly around the availability and affordability of healthcare, to bolster future efforts to improve healthcare access for rural people.
ISSN:1477-8211
1477-822X
DOI:10.1057/s41285-022-00181-9