Health Disparities in Orthopedic Trauma: a Qualitative Study Examining Providers' Perspectives on Barriers to Care and Recovery Outcomes

Overview

Journal Soc Work Health Care

Publisher Routledge

Specialties Health Services
Social Sciences

Date 2023 May 4

PMID 37139813

Authors

Jafar Bakhshaie

Nathan S Fishbein

Emily Woodworth

Nimesha Liyanage

Terence Penn

A Rani Elwy

Ana-Maria Vranceanu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Social workers involved in interdisciplinary orthopedic trauma care can benefit from the knowledge of providers' perspectives on healthcare disparities in this field. Using qualitative data from focus groups conducted on 79 orthopedic care providers at three Level 1 trauma centers, we assessed their perspectives on orthopedic trauma healthcare disparities and discussed potential solutions. Focus groups originally aimed to detect barriers and facilitators of the implementation of a trial of a live video mind-body intervention to aid in recovery in orthopedic trauma care settings (Toolkit for Optimal Recovery-TOR). We used the Socio-Ecological Model to analyze an emerging code of "health disparities" during data analysis to determine at which levels of care these disparities occurred. We identified factors related to health disparities in orthopedic trauma care and outcomes at the Individual (Education- comprehension, health-literacy; Language Barriers; Psychological Health- emotional distress, alcohol/drug use, learned helplessness; Physical Health- obesity, smoking; and Access to Technology), Relationship (Social Support Network), Community (Transportation and Employment Security), and Societal level (Access- safe/clean housing, insurance, mental health resources; Culture). We discuss the implications of the findings and provide recommendations to address these issues, with a specific focus on their relevance to the field of social work in health care.

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