Older Patients’ Access to Care Essay

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The problem of access to care has become one of the pressing issues in contemporary nursing and healthcare;
The detrimental impact of the issue has been amplified by inadequate patient education and inconsistent communication between nurses and their communities;
The issue affects particularly ethnic minorities due to cultural difference and language issues;
In his study, Nguyen (2012) addresses the effects that sociocultural factors produce on the level of access to care for aging Asian American patients.

Background

A rapid rise in the number of ethnic and racial minorities has been observed in the U.S. communities lately;
The number of Asian people in the U.S. is currently twice as large as it was in the 1970s;
Aging Asian American people constitute 2.3% of the total of Asian American citizens (801,000 according to the 2001 Census);
Despite the increase in their number, Aging Asian American citizens still have low access to healthcare services;
Due to the challenging social position in their home state, Asian American refuges have difficulties adjusting to the U.S. setting;
Hypothesis: due to the lack of English skills and the subsequent drop in the availability of health-related options can be observed.

Andersen’s behavioral model is traditionally seen as the best tool for studying the issue at hand;
However, it may cause difficulties when conceptualizing key cultural variables linked to the target group;
Including economic factors into the conceptual framework is useful since the specified factors have proven to be of noticeable influence;
The concept of cultural capital should also be incorporated into the conceptual framework to characterize the target group;
The term “group” is believed to reflect the characteristics of the target population best, according to the research.

Since correlations and causations between key variables had to be located, the quantitative research design was used;
The chi-square test was deployed as the means of establishing the cause-and-effect relationships between the variables;
A sample size of 3,011 participants was used to examine the hypothesis;
Ethnic background (Asian Americans) and age (50-85) were used as the main inclusion criteria for considering the participants for the research;
The jackknife replication method was used as the sampling tool;
A survey was utilized to collect key data;
The independent variables were represented by Anderson’s behavioral model;
The dependent variable was represented by the existence of the source of care for the target population.

The research results indicated that most of the participants had a good command of English;
On average, the participants were 63.19 years old;
10% of the research participants had been living in the U.S. at least for ten years at the time of the assessment;
Within the sample, 10.66% did not have healthcare insurance;
Within the sample, 7.8% did not have healthcare insurance;
Women represented the majority of the respondents (52.17%) (Nguyen, 2012).

The research results have proven that the correlation between the access to care among Asian Americans and the issues such as their command of English, ethnicity, and immigration status exists;
The study has also found noticeable variations across the Asian population due to the presence of multiple ethnicities, such as Vietnamese and Chinese;
The research has indicated that the development of culture-specific and culture-appropriate interventions will help to increase access to care for Asian Americans.

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