Mens Health and Health Services - Term Paper Example

MEN’S HEALTH & HEALTH SERVICES Name: Institution: Tutor: Date: Introduction Use of services of health care as well as access to health care services is very essential to good wellbeing. In the entire world, men’s health is poorer than their counterparts: women. Usage of health services by women is higher than that one of men. In fact, men are major risk factor for premature death in some developed nations (Anderson, 2005). Men in Australia have higher chances of experiencing severe health problems than women in the same country. Current research indicates that women are likely to visit their general practitioners as compared to men. On the other hand, men tent to have shorter consultations, see their general practitioners later in the course of sickness, and tend to leave major issues of health unattended. This research will focus on giving major men’s barriers in accessing health services such as geographic barriers, barriers caused by provider side, socio-cultural barriers, financial barriers and barriers caused by user side. The study will also outline a contemporary health issue that faces Australian men. Moreover, it will link identified contemporary to one of the six priority areas in the National Male Health Policy. Geographical barriers greatly affect men’s access to services of health care. Generally, men that reside in mountainous regions do not frequently access services of health care like men that stay in delta areas (Avedon, 2007). In mountainous regions, the men rarely contact health care services, noticeably less than those men in lowland areas. For lowland men, the community health centers are closer to them thus providing services of health care. At the same time, few male in mountainous regions manage to reach health services that are usually located at higher levels of the mountains. Put together, the double economic and geographic factors influence access to health care services by poor male that live in mountainous areas ( 6-times lower) than the rich male’s access of health care services in delta regions, a comparatively wide gap. Because of geographical problems, male patients usually get to health care facilities very later stages of their illness (Conrad & Banks, 2007). Distance, another geographical indicator, shows its influence on utilization of health care service by male people. Despite the fact that male people in mountainous and highland regions are issued with health care cards, most of them that reside in remote places cannot access facilities of health care because of transportation problems. The second factor that influences health care services accessibility is economic factor. health care system barriers particularly the cost of accessing services of health care and the closing down for time outside regular working hours impacts men’s accessibility to those services. Financial barriers like indirect health care expenses are key obstacles in health care services accessibility among the male. Research shows that income is highly associated with the probability of locating professional services of health care when one falls ill (Gray, 2005). The poor male group has less opportunity of getting health care services whilst the richest males have more opportunities of obtaining health care services. Still studies performed in rural regions also indicate that there is a higher propensity among the male poor people to delay chances of seeking health care services due to their low capabilities of paying both for higher transportation and health service costs. This makes male people that are poor to only access health care services at grassroots levels particularly for out-patient health care. In Australia, the percentage of male people that use district hospitals indicates no noticeable differences among gender by standard of living. A comparatively high percentage of women (close to 40%) utilize national/provincial hospitals. This is distinctly higher than male and children groups of the same living standards. Furthermore, because of transportation problems, as a result, even when the poor male is given free services of health care, they still face financial problems involving indirect costs such as costs of transportation and foods expenditure. The popularity of services termed as ‘male friendly’ like MensLine and Pit Stop that are generally considered to impact on male towards assisting in seeking health care behavior lacks. Difficult administrative procedures, long time of waiting together with negative health practitioners’ attitudes, lack of understandable information regarding when to pay a visit to a health care provider or a doctor influences male people in accessing services of health care at a higher level (Kita, 2006). Additionally, for elderly males that requires support so as to be taken to health care facilities, another factor that affects the health care service utilization by men. Usage of dissimilar languages by many health practitioners as well as male patients influences the accessibility to services of health care at higher levels. This communication problem makes it difficult for health practitioners to carry out diagnosis. It also makes male patients hesitate when communicating with those doctors. Backward culture/customs that are usually carried out before looking for health care services at a health care center may result in delaying in health care service seeking behavior and might complicate illness conditions for male patients. Concerning barriers resulting from the provider side, health care service availability and high quality of health care services are vital factors influence utilization of health care services especially quality health care services by men in higher level hospitals. Available services of health care enable male people to access all health care as per their requirements. Quality of health care services mainly depends on the attitudes and capacity of health practitioners as well as availability of equipment and drugs. Currently, the main problems that face many health care and facilities are inadequate professional health practitioners, lack of medical drugs and equipment, lack of precise information to support cure of various diseases (Heidelbaugh & Landon, 2007). Education, sex and awareness of illness of male patients are additional factors that also influence utilization of health care service by male. Previous research point out that sex is a barrier in accessing health care. Women use health care services more often than men. Besides, in rural areas, there is a major difference in demand and need for health care services among men, children and women. A survey carried out by National Health Survey in Australia demonstrated that males are considerably less likely to seek for health practitioners for consultations than females. In view of that, gender is also a key barrier to utilization of health-care among the non-poor and poor male and females. This reason can be well enlightened for less by exploitation of qualified services of health care in women is that women are primarily caregivers in most families in Australia. Women are always overburdened by three things: household chores responsibility, generating income and social activities participation. All the above leaves women fatigued, hence making them frequently attend health centers at provincial/district levels for treatment and consultation. Consequently, the use of more qualified services of health care by women makes them have longer life expectancy. Men, on the other hand, are generally unwilling to attend to health practitioners as they believe it disrupts their role of being family providers. From a survey carried out last year in Australia on health seeking behaviour of Men and Women in rural districts, it was demonstrated that women are more likely not only to take care of themselves but also care for other family members particularly children. Education too plays a significant part in utilization and access of services of health care. Several researches indicated that quality education is a factor that highly influences utilization of health care. For instance, results from Australian national health survey 2008-2009 showed that sufficient education is positively associated with the high probability of visiting professional health practitioners when one is ill (Murphy, 2007). Male patients with no or less schooling than elementary primary school completed have little chance of seeking services of health care than the women group. The results further showed that the likelihood of consulting a professional practitioner steadily increases with both the level of per capita family income as well as education. For those male patients that were high school graduates their rate rose to over 6% likelihood of consulting a health practitioner whenever they become injured or ill than those male that did not get any schooling. Evidence from a different study also indicated that low education is a major factor too that impacts male people on their lower accessibility to services of health care. Cases of low education confines the capabilities of male in recognizing the need of seeking health care services and understanding the benefits of consulting professional health practitioners than looking for alternative forms of usage of traditional as well as local health providers and self treatment. It was as well pointed that male individuals that had more schooling were more likely to seek and access services of health care than male individuals that did not attend schooling, particularly in relation to health care services of elderly people (Riska, 2006). Even less or no educated mothers were likely to seek faster health care services for both themselves and their children as compared to fathers with no or less schooling. Furthermore, it was also indicated that diseases awareness was another major factor that greatly affects health care seeking behaviours of male people. The ethnic and poor male people generally were seen to have low disease awareness. It implies that disease symptoms are not recognized well by this male group that is vulnerable. This low illness awareness at times leads to the circumstances of delay in coming to a conclusion on whether to seek services of health care (Rothfeld & Romaine, 2005). Regarding the barriers that affect accessibility to services of health care for children and women, it pointed out “three delays” model: delay in making decision on when to seek services of health care, delays in reaching the facilities of health care and also delay between receiving quality health care services and getting at the health care centers. Delays in making right decisions to seek services of health care can be attributed to lack of enough information on danger signs of masculinity or cultural conventions among male people delaying to seek health care services or unfortunate economic status of most males (Tan, 2005). Delay in getting to health care facilities is likely to emanate from various reasons. These may include no or bad transportation, long distance, local practices of self-care at their residential places, lack of disease awareness, especially danger signs. Delay between receiving quality health care services and arriving at the health care centers can be caused by delay in disease treatment, wrong diagnosis, lack of right treatment equipment, lack of well qualified health practitioners and lack of drug availability. The male people in Australia consider conventional ‘western’ masculinity above their health and place it to higher level of importance. Among the Australian men, the concept of masculinity illustrates that men do not have to choose to work whether they enjoy and like it or not. Instead, they have to do it so as be recognized as real men. With that, men have continued to believe that the worst a man could do was dependent on a female. Depending on a woman would imply one has lost all his manhood to a lady. At the same time, the notion that man ought to be the only family provider became so prevalent (Simon, 2004). That masculinity perception displayed male image as being the major reason for their lesser use of services of health care. The ‘ancient’ stereotype of a self-reliant and strong male was considered by many as to be stopping some males’ ability of seeking help from health practitioners whenever they felt unwell. Seeking medication or having normal health care checking was seen as sign of weakness among men. Men wanted to be viewed as being independent, strong and unlikely to be disturbed by their personal health or to seek out for help from health practitioners. The contemporary health issue facing Australian men is the need to facilitate male medical help-seeking behaviour (Schneider, 2010). This can be performed by providing and designing health care services to handle various gender-related barriers in accessing health care services. This issue can be linked to one of the six priority areas of the national male health policy. The area of the policy is provision of easily accessible after-hours health care services. General health care practices that would be open on the basis of afterhours would be more flexible and much easier to access by males as most health practitioners would who work full time, have long time to communicate with male patients. This would strongly help those male that find it difficult to go to health care centers during regular opening hours. Current health promotion strategies related to this issue that should be enacted is the provision of incentives by The Australian Government for general health care practices to enable male patients to access health care facilities even during afterhours – especially other time outside the normal weekdays (Schneider, 2010). This will encourage nurses and general practitioners to provide quality afterhours services that would assist in addressing the masculinity issue and impact on men’s health status. Health policies that involve men’s health care should be improved to prevent vulnerability of this group. The six priority areas for action in the National Male Health Policy include: Optimal health outcomes for males, access to health care for males, health equity between males at different life stages, a focus on preventive health for males, building a strong evidence base on male health, and health equity between population groups of males. Adapting services of health care mainly to facilitate access of male to health care centers, for instance by changing the way general health practitioners communicate with male patients would enhance the engagement level by men with general practitioners (Schneider, 2010). It is likely to change the way of thinking among the male so that the male do not consider being sick and visiting heath care facilities as personal weakness, but seeking medical help as a very responsible choice. In addition, it would be more significant in increasing health care seeking in most the community health care centers and benefit many males. Benefit from the health care policy on men, accessibility improvement to inpatient and out-patient health care by men and other vulnerable target groups would get better. However, efficacy of the execution in regard to giving of health care services to men and other targeted groups are still yet to be implemented some parts of Australia. There is more evidence to support the notion that coverage of the male and other ethnic minorities like children has not been covered fully by the national male health policy because of many reasons: the first one is the weaknesses in the procedure of identifying the male patients at the lower local level; the second is the delays met during the distribution and printing of health care insurance cards; the third one was the limited organization and management capacity of health care practitioners. Although the accessibility to services of health care by male beneficiaries did increase, it did not improve to the expected level. Apparently, several male beneficiaries did not start visiting health care facilities (Schneider, 2010). The main factors that led to the low rates of health care utilization were varied: the low health care quality, mainly at the level of provincial health care centers that were caused by insufficient human resource both in competency, number and poor health care facilities as well as inadequate equipment supplies; the low male accessibility to health care centers caused by geographical problems and long distance to services health care; and lack of health care knowledge on available services and practices among the male beneficiaries. Conclusion This study has shown that mortality and morbidity rates are essential in establishing that health of men should be closely monitored. It has also been indicated that even though men’s health-seeking is recognized to be challenging, there is limited research to propose why and how this is problematic. In summary, men have been blamed for not seeking out for services of health care, and hence they turn out to suffer from their individual behaviours. Advocates of national policies have indicated too that lack of attempts to formulate national and state men’s health care policies, for both health practitioners and researchers, are to blame low men’s health care status. Works Cited Anderson, B. (2005). Reproductive health: women and men's shared responsibility. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. Avedon, G. (2007). Men's health muscle chow: more than 150 easy-to-follow recipes to ... New York: Rodale Press. Broom, A. & Tovey, P. (2009). Men's health: body, identity and social context. New York: Alan White. Conrad, D. & Banks, I. (2007). Men's Health - How to Do It. New York: Alan White. Gray, M. (2005). Fundamental aspects of men's health. New York: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Heidelbaugh, J & Landon, M. (2007). Clinical men's health: evidence in practice. 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