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Biomedical subjects

C H Browner

Publications and source records attributed to C H Browner.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

'Collective fictions': similarities in reasons for accepting maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein screening among women of diverse ethnic and social class backgrounds.

We analyzed the decisions of an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of women to accept or refuse a prenatal diagnostic test. We found that how women were informed about the test and the kind of information they were given determined their decisions more than their ethnic or social class background. To explain this, we argue that the women and their health care providers created a 'collective fiction' which situated the testing within the domain of routine prenatal care and denied its central connection to selective abortion and its eugenic implications.

Abortion, Eugenic↗
PubMed1989

Compliance and the patient's perspective: controlling symptoms in everyday life.

Non-compliance with medical advice is poorly understood. Most of the existing literature considers the problem only from the doctor's point of view. We undertook a diachronic, qualitative study of the illness experiences of 19 women to try to understand non-compliance from the patient's perspective. Three-fourths of our study group had ceased to follow their doctor's recommendations by four months post-diagnosis. Their non-compliance could not be explained by the fact that the women held understandings of their illnesses which were incongruent with their physician's; nor were they unable to understand the diagnosis they received. A consideration of the roles that their diagnosis and treatments played in their daily lives proved more useful in explaining their failure to follow physicians' recommendations. Patients' use of treatments reflected their desire to control symptoms within the constraints of their daily routines.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1989

Women, household and health in Latin America.

Although recent studies have identified some of the links in Latin America between uneven capitalist economic development and health, the impact of development on either the health of women or on household health is still largely unknown. This account identifies several areas of needed research. It focuses on how changing women's roles and patterns of domestic production affect women's reproductive behavior, and the consequences of these changes for the health of women and other members of their households.

Family↗
PubMed1987

Job stress and health: the role of social support at work.

Data are presented on the use of social resources to reduce the negative effects of perceived job stress on the health of 26 psychiatric technicians who cared for severely and profoundly retarded residents of a state institution. Data were collected by participant observation, semistructured interviews, and the self-administered Cornell Medical Index. Sources of job stress were found to stem not from problems associated with the care of the retarded but rather from staff members' inability to control other critical aspects of their work. Staff with supportive work-based social networks reported significantly better health (as measured by the Cornell Medical Index) than those without such networks.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Chemical bases for medicinal plant use in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Fifty-eight medicinal plants used for the management of reproduction and the treatment of women's reproductive health problems in an indigenous community in southern Mexico are described. The efficacy of these plants is assessed according to both community members' understandings of the therapeutic effects they seek and the standards of conventional Western medicine. The majority of the plants contain chemicals which would appear to enable them to accomplish their intended effects in either or both the popular and the conventional medical systems.

Chemical Phenomena↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Risk, autonomy, and responsibility: informed consent for prenatal testing.

Why is informed consent required for prenatal testing? Consent is routinely sought, but examination of the theory behind and the implementation of informed consent for prenatal testing suggests that we need to reconceptualize both the risks and the responsibilities involved in offering and accepting such prenatal tests.

Abortion, Eugenic↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Abnormal Pap screening among Mexican-American women: impediments to receiving and reporting follow-up care.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To understand impediments to receiving and reporting timely follow-up care for abnormal Pap tests among Hispanic women. DESIGN: Descriptive, qualitative. SETTING: A federally funded cancer screening clinic in urban South Texas. SAMPLE: 11 Mexican/Mexican-American women over 40 years old who appear in clinic records as "lapsed" in follow-up and 5 clinic staff members. METHODS: Semistructured, qualitative interviews regarding staff and patient concepts about cancer, cancer screening, and follow-up. Abstraction of patients' clinic charts. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES: Factors associated with women being classified as "lapsed" in follow-up care for abnormal Pap tests. FINDINGS: Only two patients had no follow-up, while nine eventually had follow-up, either elsewhere or after several missed appointments. Contrary to expectations, poor knowledge, lack of social support, and lack of availability of care were not factors impeding follow-up. Reluctance to be examined by a male practitioner, lack of flexibility in scheduling clinic appointments, and poor staff communication regarding appointments and the seriousness of the condition were all influences negatively affecting follow-up behavior. Nevertheless, these women went to significant lengths to comply with follow-up recommendations. CONCLUSIONS: The classification of patients' follow-up behavior as "lapsed" was not attributable to culturally based beliefs and attitudes, nor lack of knowledge and motivation, but was primarily the result of institutional features such as scheduling and record-keeping practices and policies. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE: More thorough evaluation of actual behaviors would ensure more accurate assessment of follow-up behavior in this group. More female practitioners, better communication of appointments and of the seriousness of the condition, and more flexible scheduling options would reduce the difficulty these Hispanic patients encountered in having timely follow-up care.

Adult↗