Psychosocial Factors Influencing Mexican-American Women's Adherence with Hemodialysis Treatment

Abstract

Patients frequently do not fully adhere to treatment regimens. Despite the fact that this issue has been extensively researched, patient nonadherence is still not well understood. Previous studies have tended to neglect the study of phenomenological perceptions and psychosocial influences on nonadherence behavior as well as issues unique to culturally diverse populations. This author used an interpretive approach to examine the cognitive and phenomenological dimensions of how Mexican-American women receiving dialysis treatment experience their illness (n = 26). Poverty, longer treatment history, immigrant status, perceived identity losses, and family dysfunction emerged as factors that influenced treatment nonadherence among this purposive sample. This article moves from results to implications for social work practice with this population.

Work of being an adult patient with chronic kidney disease: a systematic review of qualitative studies

“… 205 I have heard (about) a lot of people that died on dialysis and had strokes on dialysis… Once I sit down there, I don’t know whether I’m gonna come out alive or dead (Berta, aged 45 years, blind amputee, dialysis patient for 18 months). 76 I think about (death) everyday. I mean you can’t help it.…”

Dietary and fluid restriction perceptions of patients undergoing haemodialysis: an exploratory study

“…Family support is vital in encouraging and motivating patients to adhere to their dietary and fluid recommendations. A mixture of studies conducted in the United States of America, Italy, Japan and Singapore, which were mostly qualitative, established a close association between family support and positive adherent behaviours (Tijerina , Cicolini et al . , Griva et al .…”

Ethnic minorities’ and immigrants’ therapeutic (non)adherence: What is the role of social and cultural contexts?

“…Immigrants and ethnic minorities often have low SES (Gurung, 2006;Straub, 2012) and non-adherence among these groups has been related to poverty (Colby, Wang, Chhabra, & Pérez-Escamilla, 2012;Tijerina, 2006Tijerina, , 2009 and unemployment (Vissman, Young, Wilkin, & Rhodes, 2013). How does this happen?…”

“…In some cases, poor TA occurs because of the high costs of drugs or recommended diet (e.g., hemodialysis treatment, which presupposes a specific diet) (Tijerina, 2006(Tijerina, , 2009. In other cases, poor TA is related to lack of transportation to the health-care services (e.g., Vissman et al, 2011) and, in some countries, with lack of health insurance (e.g., Consedine, 2011).…”