This paper reports on an evaluation of the ‘Hy Vong Moi’ (New Hope) program aimed at providing emotional, physical and cultural support to new parents of Vietnamese origin living…
Abstract
This paper reports on an evaluation of the ‘Hy Vong Moi’ (New Hope) program aimed at providing emotional, physical and cultural support to new parents of Vietnamese origin living in the Greater Dandenong area, Melbourne, Australia, and who are experiencing problems relating to drug use within their families. Six young Australian Vietnamese women participated in the program. Data were collected via questionnaires, focus groups, diaries and the case worker’s journal. Analysis was ongoing in keeping with a participatory research approach. All the women who participated in the program, involving the setting up of a parents/mothers playgroup as well as provision of education and support, reported very positively on the program. All agreed that the formal help they received had made an enormous difference in their lives and was assisting them to integrate into Australian culture with potentially positive benefits for their children. The additional support through the parents/mothers playgroup allowed formation of new friendships, the sharing of experiences and the acquisition of new skills, including parenting skills. All wanted the program and the parents/mothers playgroup to continue as a means of providing further assistance to them and others.
Details
Keywords
Health care organizational research should pay greater attention to the specific settings where health is practiced. An ethnographic account of humor, ritual and defiance is…
Abstract
Purpose
Health care organizational research should pay greater attention to the specific settings where health is practiced. An ethnographic account of humor, ritual and defiance is presented from 29 months spent in a private, concierge-type radiation oncology center. A thick description of the setting and interaction among center staff and patients is offered in an attempt to establish why qualitative research of health care settings is so important. Findings are compared to Ellingson’s work on health care setting. Humor, ritual and defiance have therapeutic value and deserve greater attention in cancer treatment centers and health care organizations more broadly. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
An ethnographic account of humor, ritual and defiance is presented from 29 months spent in a private, concierge-type radiation oncology center through thick description.
Findings
This study reinforces the literature on the value of institutionalizing humor and ritual to improve patients’ experience in cancer care given the dominance of large public institutions, most easily accessed by academic researchers. Suncoast Coast Radiation Center’s “institutionalized humor” is an important finding that should be examine further. Scholarship can also illuminate the use of ritual in settings where health care is practiced.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to a particular research setting which is a private, concierge care radiation oncology treatment center in the Southeastern USA.
Practical implications
Cancer care centers should consider carefully institutionalizing humor and ritual into their daily practices. Further, patient defiance should be reinterpreted not as a patient deficiency but as a therapeutic coping mechanism by patients.
Social implications
While nearly half of cancer care in the USA is offered in private, for-profit institutions, the vast majority of the understanding of cancer care comes only from non-profit and government-run institutions. Shining a light of these neglected cancer care settings will add to the understanding and the ability to improve the care offered to patients.
Originality/value
This is the first health ethnography in a concierge care, cancer care treatment setting. It tests the proposition that humor, ritual and defiance play an important role in a private concierge cancer care organization.