Navigating between illness paradigms: treatment seeking by Samoan people in Samoa and New Zealand.
There are substantial Samoan communities in New Zealand. Most Samoan people use both palagi (Western) and traditional Samoan health care. Western practitioners sometimes comment on Samoan patients' seemingly erratic patterns of seeking and using health care. Within a larger study on knowledge and the use of antibiotics, we carried out semistructured interviews with 31 Samoan people in Samoa and New Zealand.Accounts of participants' responses to illness and patterns of treatment seeking reveal how Samoan people draw on traditional and Western models of treatment and healing resources. Samoan people are very active interpreters of illness symptoms, using (at least) the two illness paradigms they know of to make sense of symptoms.These paradigms and systems of treatment are sometimes used experimentally, to determine whether illnesses are Samoan or Western. Symptom interpretation and decision making about treatment are done at the family level as well as the individual level. The individual might hold a particular view of what symptoms mean and what to do about them, but might not act on this if overruled or persuaded by other family members.
Norris
Pauline
P
School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. pauline.norris@otago.ac.nz
Fa'alau
Fuafiva
F
Va'ai
Cecilia
C
Churchward
Marianna
M
Arroll
Bruce
B
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009520:New Zealand; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000208:ethnology*; D018947:Samoa / Q000208:ethnology