Disease experiences of female patients with Hansen’s disease residing in settlement in Korea

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify female Hansen's disease experience in settlement village in Korea. Method: For this study, 11 participants in settlement village were purposively chosen. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews from July to December 2015. Verbatim transcripts were analyzed following Colaizzi's phenomenological analysis to uncover the meaning of the experiences of the participants. Results: The study results showed that female Hansen's disease experience in settlement village consisted of 9 theme and 4 theme clusters: 1) Inescapable shackles; 2) Suffered as if being in prison,; 3) In no position to be a woman or a mother; 4) Another hometown. Conclusion: The findings of this study recommends that health care professionals should pay attention not only to leprosy patients to reduce their physical and psychological suffering but also to the community and public culture to promote integration of Hansenin in the community, continued promotion and reform are needed to overcome the stigma. The results of the present study can help us in a better understanding of various aspects of female patients with Hansen's disease residing in settlement.

Experiences of living with leprosy: A systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis

“…All the studies used a qualitative approach or had a clearly reported qualitative component. There were nine studies based on the phenomenological approach [12,19,43,49,56,58,62,80,87], two were ethnographic studies [63,68], two used the grounded theory approach [55,78], and six were mixed methods [14,34,51,53,57,79], but only the India and Indonesia 1 [79] https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010761.t002…”

“…The most frequently absent detail in the included studies was the information on the influence of the researcher on the research (question 7, S5 Appendix); only five studies reported this item. [34,45,58,62,73] Seventeen studies [12,19,43,44,47,59,63,65,[69][70][71][75][76][77]79,80,83] had no obvious statement locating the researcher culturally or theoretically.…”

“…This synthesised finding consisted of three categories and 43 findings from 27 studies. [12,16,18,[43][44][45][48][49][50]52,54,[58][59][60][62][63][64][65][66][67]72,76,78,[81][82][83]87] This synthesis documented the effects of leprosy on the skin, eyes, wounds on their limbs, nerve injury, and pain. Due to poor access to healthcare and delays in treatment, the individuals suffering from leprosy developed deformities that impacted their day-to-day activities.…”

“…There were 13 findings in this category that were extracted from 12 studies. [18,43,45,50,58,[62][63][64]66,[81][82][83] They discussed the physical symptoms and signs of leprosy and their difficulties. Some studies described the disfiguring spots, skin rashes, and ulcerations [62,63,66,82,83], deformities of the face and limbs [18,43,50,58,81], constant pain [64], or the lack of it.…”

“…[18,43,45,50,58,[62][63][64]66,[81][82][83] They discussed the physical symptoms and signs of leprosy and their difficulties. Some studies described the disfiguring spots, skin rashes, and ulcerations [62,63,66,82,83], deformities of the face and limbs [18,43,50,58,81], constant pain [64], or the lack of it. [45] One study reported the ignorance of the person who was unable to recognise the symptoms of leprosy [50]; in contrast, three studies showed a high suspicion of leprosy with the onset of the spots and rashes [66,82,83].…”