Date of Conferral

2021

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Nursing

Advisor

Maria M. Ojeda

Abstract

Culturally competent care is widely accepted as a strategy to address healthcare disparities based on the perceptions of the individual provider, yet this approach lacks the voice of the African American (AA) communities intended to benefit from the strategy. Individuals in AA communities have been shown to suffer higher incidence of disease, disproportionately poorer health outcomes, and inequitable healthcare treatment. Framed by Leininger’s culture care theory, the purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study was to explore the lived cultural experiences of AA recipients of care when interacting with the healthcare system in an effort to contribute evidence to improve the health of the AA community. For this qualitative study, seven AA participants, at least 18 years of age, were recruited to participate in semistructured interviews. Manual coding and thematic analysis revealed five major themes: (a) communication, (b) medical mistrust, (c) access to healthcare, (d) satisfaction with healthcare experience, and (e) dissatisfaction with healthcare experience. Thirteen subthemes were identified that supported the major themes. The results of this study provide a better understanding of the lived cultural experiences of the AA recipients of healthcare based on the shared perceptions of previous encounters. These findings have the potential to contribute to positive social change by providing better understanding of the experiences of members of a vulnerable population negatively impacted by healthcare disparities in an effort to support the development of initiatives to reduce these disparities. Future studies may use the identified themes as the basis for participatory research to develop system-level strategies that result in meaningful improvements to the healthcare experiences of AAs.

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