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Evaluation of a healthcare walk-in centre in an immigrant-dense area from the perspective of Swedish-born patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2021

Rikard Wärdig*
Affiliation:
Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, Division of Nursing and Reproductive Health, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Emina Hadziabdic
Affiliation:
Department of Health and Caring Sciences, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden
Katarina Hjelm
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
*
Author for correspondence: Rikard Wärdig, Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, Division of Nursing and Reproductive Health, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden. Tel: +4613286850. E-mail: rikard.wardig@liu.se
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Abstract

Aim:

This study evaluates a healthcare walk-in centre in an immigrant-dense area from the perspective of Swedish-born patients.

Background:

The studied healthcare centre started a walk-in centre to increase healthcare accessibility for immigrants. This form of care is not primarily for Swedish-born patients although everyone is welcome. For this reason, it is important to evaluate the walk-in centre from different perspectives: the healthcare workers, the immigrant patients, and in this study focusing on the Swedish-born patients.

Method:

This qualitative exploratory study used content analysis to analyse data collected from semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews were held with 12 purposively sampled Swedish-born patients visiting a healthcare centre in Sweden.

Findings:

Most informants characterised the care they received as professional and timely and noted that accessibility was the main reason they sought care at the walk-in centre. In addition, they noted that being able to seek care on the day they want creates a feeling of security. However, Swedish-born informants seemed to prefer a traditional healthcare centre, although they viewed the walk-in centre as legitimate because everyone has access to it.

Conclusion:

As the walk-in centre was perceived as having good accessibility, participants experienced that they could easily receive help for minor health problems. However, they also identified several ways the walk-in centre could be improved. For example, some participants preferred to remain outside while awaiting their turn to see a healthcare provider and wanted immigrant patients to leave their relatives at home when possible to minimise the risk of spreading infection. In addition, some participants thought a triage system could be implemented so that more severe cases could advance more quickly in the queue. The homogeneous sample of informants raises questions about whether this healthcare model is indeed accessible to everyone.

Information

Type
Research
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021