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Care relationships, conflicts and therapeutic expectations in the village of Bama (Burkina Faso)

2015

Abstract

Conflicts in care relationships convey therapeutic expectations. This study allows that assertion. It is a micro -sociological study based on an ethnographic work in a village named Bama and located in western Burkina Faso. The analysis of conflicts in health care relationships proved relevant on the following issues: -Individual mechanisms in therapeutic choices; -The perception of health workers' social lives; -The defiance-confidence towards the health worker; -The relationships between formal and informal health workers. This research enlightens two specific aspects that hel ps the understanding of conflicts in health care relationships. On one hand, the study shows that the conflict exists at the level of the mechanisms of therapeutic choices made in the domestic sphere of people approached during the field survey. This analy sis is significant because it helps to support that the conflict in health relations can occur outside the traditional relationships between health care agents and users of health services. Specifically, men exert an influence over women in the decision pr ocess on the therapeutic quest. Moreover, the male power of influence is very often reflected on the temporality and economic terms of the use of formal care. The second specific contribution of this study is the analysis of the defianceconfidence, which is the fact that many patients who consult in the village primary health facilities challenge health workers. Through the forms of disputes that arise, the defiance-confidence informs an adversarial relationship based on a double perspective: opposing to d emand more equal relationships with the health worker and to defend therapeutic preferences. Confidence in the formal health services is therefore the basic element on which relies the defiance of local health workers as well as expectations in the specifi c areas in which they operate: the acts prescribed by health workers (the diagnosis and treatment), some standards of the health system (case of the standards of reference), and the perception of health workers moral quality (integrity) sometimes establish ed according to the reception and the cost of the prescription.