Experiences of returning patients at a Homoeopathic community clinic

Abstract

Introduction

Abstract

South Africa has a dual healthcare system which comprises of a public and private healthcare sector. The public sector is state controlled and provides allopathic medicinal care only, whilst the private healthcare sector is flexible. This means that the population has the choice of the medicinal therapy such as allopathic medicine or complementary medicine. Homeopathy is one of the complementary medicine with major growth and it has been in existence for so long in South Africa. However, a large proportion of the South African public is unclear with regards to homoeopathic understanding. Aim of the study

The aim of the study was to explore the experiences of returning patients at Ukuba Nesibindi Homoeopathic Community Clinic and the study was guided by the grand tour question that is: What are the experiences as a returning patient, at UNHCC with regard to the care they had received? Methodology

A qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual design was employed. Holloway and Wheeler (2010) suggest that a qualitative research in the field of healthcare is used to establish how people think of the experiences and their suffering and further explore their perspective on the care and treatment they received within the healthcare system. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a minimum of 12 participants who had visited the clinic four times or more. The data was collected and analysed using Tesch’s eight-step procedure. Results

The results showed that although majority of the participant had vague understanding of homoeopathy, participants acknowledged that the quality of help received at the homeopathic clinic were highly beneficial. Furthermore, thematic analysis showed that participant ware dissatisfied with other streams of healthcare and contented with

homoeopathic treatment. However, participants highlighted that the infrastructure at UNHCC needs improvement in terms of space. Conclusion

The salient themes of this study strongly suggest that homeopathic medicine and practices was widely accepted by the participant. It also emerged that participant had trust and expressed confidence in homoeopaths at UNHCC. Based on these findings, the researcher highly recommends the need for the integration of homoeopathic practice and medicine into the South Africa Primary health care. Importantly, the integration of homoeopathic medicine as a primary health care provider will help provide an alternati ve platform to ease the load on conventional allopathic medical clinics.