‘Oh, those therapists will become your best friends’: maternal satisfaction with clinics providing physical, occupational and speech therapy services to children with disabilities

• Published in: Sociology of health & illness 2001-11, Vol.23 (6), p.798-828
• Main Author: Green, Sara E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children; Client Satisfaction; Clinics; disability; Disabled children; Handicapped; Health Care Services; healthcare; Mothers; parents; Quality of Health Care; Satisfaction; Social Environment; Sociology; Sociology of health and medicine; Stigma; Therapy; Treatment
• ISSN: 0141-9889; 1467-9566
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.00276

Little is known about maternal satisfaction with clinics that provide physical, occupational and speech therapy services to chronically impaired children. Because of the frequency and duration of contact between mothers and therapy clinics, this represents a significant gap in the literature on satisfaction with health care providers. This study uses a modified labelling approach to the issue of interactions between the own, the wise and the others as a framework for understanding such satisfaction. Data are drawn from a survey of 81 mothers of children regularly treated at one of three paediatric therapy clinics, and from extensive interactive interviews with seven of these mothers. Findings suggest that satisfaction with therapy clinics is a complex phenomenon that is affected by the relationships among mothers, the wise and others, in a number of ways: (1) Mothers who find it easier to interact with wise individuals than with others are more satisfied with the therapy clinic; (2) The perceived quality of the social environment is more important to overall satisfaction among mothers who do not prefer interactions with wise individuals than among those who do; (3) Among mothers who do not prefer interactions with wise individuals, perceived stigma is inversely related to overall satisfaction and moderates the relationship between the social environment and satisfaction. The greater the degree of perceived stigma, the more important the social environment of the clinic is to overall satisfaction among mothers who do not prefer interactions with the wise.