Prisoners’ experience and perceptions of health care in Australian prisons: a qualitative study

Abstract

Purpose

Patient-centred care is a key approach used in Australia for the delivery of quality health care, and understanding experiences and perceptions is a key part to this. This paper aims to explore prisoners’ experiences and perceptions of health-care service provision in New South Wales, Australia.

Design/methodology/approach

In February and March 2017, 24 focus groups, consisting of 128 participants, were undertaken using semi-structured interviews that explored experiences of health care in prison.

Findings

A conceptualisation of the prisoners’ health-care experience around the core category of access to health care emerged from the data. Enablers or barriers to this access were driven by three categories: a prison construct – how the prisoners “see” the prison system influencing access to health care; a health-care system construct – how the prisoners “see” the prison health-care system and the pathways to navigate it; and personal factors. Communication was the category with the greatest number of relational connections.

Research limitations/implications

This study takes a pragmatic approach to the analysis of data, the findings forming the basis for a future quantitative study. The findings identify communication as a key issue for access to health care.

Originality/value

This study provides first-hand accounts of enablers and barriers to accessing health-care services in the prison environment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to identify access to health care as a core category and is of value to health workers and researchers that work with the prison population.

Citation

Capon, A., McGowan, L. and Bowman, J. (2020), "Prisoners’ experience and perceptions of health care in Australian prisons: a qualitative study", International Journal of Prisoner Health, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 249-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPH-11-2019-0062