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Biomedical subjects

M A Muecke

Publications and source records attributed to M A Muecke.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Prevailing discourses among AIDS care professionals about childbearing by couples with HIV in Taiwan.

The aim of this study was to analyze the dynamics of ideology, power and language in the dominant discourses about childbearing by couples with HIV that were expressed by AIDS care professionals in Taiwan. Critical discourse analysis of the interview texts with 11 AIDS care professionals identified three prevailing discourses on childbearing by couples with HIV/AIDS: pro-children, conditional pro-choice and pro-rights. The pro-children and conditional pro-choice were the predominant discourses. The two discourses both medicalized childbearing among couples with HIV/AIDS by identifying medical authorities as the proper persons to decide which reproductive choices people with HIV/AIDS should make under what conditions. Even though the pro-rights discourse embodied an ideology of individualism, empowerment and autonomy, it was weak and relatively rare in the other two discourses.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Mother sold food, daughter sells her body: the cultural continuity of prostitution.

This article provides a cultural interpretation of female prostitution in contemporary lowland Buddhist Thai society. The heterosexual transmission of AIDS through prostitution has exposed the shallowness of our understanding of prostitution as a sociocultural phenomenon. The data were collected through case studies, participant-observation, and review of Thai language media and texts. It is argued that in the past decade or so, the simultaneous rapid growth of prostitution as a lucrative sex industry and of the Thai economy as an emerging newly industrialized country (NIC) have, paradoxically, enabled female prostitutes to conserve the basic institutions of society. This has occurred at a time when landlessness, rampant commercialism and poverty have threatened the survival of traditional lifeways among the majority rural agricultural population. Prostitution, although illegal, has flourished at least in part because it enables women, through remittances home and merit-making activities, to fulfil traditional cultural functions of daughters, conserving the institutions of family and village-level Buddhism, as well as of government.

Buddhism↗
PubMed1992

New paradigms for refugee health problems.

Two paradigms that have shaped our understanding of refugee health are identified: the objectification of refugees as a political class of excess people, and the reduction of refugee health to disease or pathology. Alternative paradigms are recommended: one to take the polyvocality of refugees into account, and one to construe refugees as prototypes of resilience despite major losses and stressors. The article is organized into three sections, mirroring the life history of refugees from internal displacement in the country of origin to asylum in a second (usually neighboring) country, and for some, to permanent resettlement in a third country. In each of the three sections, the primary topics that are treated in the literature are identified, and key problems identified for discussion.

Acculturation↗
PubMed1990

From women in white to scholarship: the new nurse leaders in Thailand.

The nature of nursing in Thailand has changed dramatically since World War II. The field is now led by a cadre of women who make nursing one of the largest occupational concentrations of women who hold doctoral degrees in the country. In this article reflections of these nurses on their profession, on their reasons for entering it, and on their contributions to it's development are discussed. The findings are derived from a survey of 16 nurses with doctoral degrees and from participant observation. The women and their parents who guided their choice of a career were attracted to nursing by ideals of social service and family obligations. They were also attracted to nursing by its cultural definition as a female career and by the pragmatics of university entrance examinations. Most of the informants attributed their career success to hard work, family support, a strong sense of responsibility and commitment, self-sacrifice for the common good, and a calm demeanor. A minority of informants stressed new values of scholarship and management skills such as long-range planning and independent thinking. The emergence of these new values suggests that nursing in Thailand is on the verge of a new stage in its rapid evolution.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

The AIDS prevention dilemma in Thailand.

"Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and its causative human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have become a rapidly spreading menace in Asia as elsewhere. This article summarizes the current status of the AIDS epidemic in Thailand, identifies the patterns of HIV transmission through Thai society, describes governmental and private responses to the epidemic, and suggests further countermeasures."

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1989

Born female: the development of nursing in Thailand.

Nursing was the first education-based occupational field for women in Thailand. In the brief span of 90 years since its beginning in hospital bedside care, it has become a professional field that has one of the greatest concentrations of women with doctoral degrees in the nation (n = 23). The academic evolution of nursing was instigated by the decisive contributions of two rich and powerful interests, the monarchy and private U.S.A.-based foundations. A cadre of doctorally prepared nurses has emerged. They, like members of other professions in Thailand, are predominantly from the urban privileged sector of society. The majority of today's nurses have followed a different course starting from petty bourgeoisie origins in towns and moving laterally through provincial bureaucratic channels. To date, lack of basic education has denied the poor and minority ethnic groups from the hill areas access to nursing. We describe the development of the nursing profession in three phases: the beginning of nurse training, 1896-1926; the creation of a small elite of nurses, 1926-1956; and the development of academic nursing, 1956 to the present. The future depends upon how the current polarization between the minority elite of university-prepared nurses and the majority lower middle class nurses proceeds. Since each group is governed and educated by separate government Ministries, and since women do not have access to higher government positions, nursing may have little control over its own development unless its new leaders take new leadership. One strategy is to recruit men into university nursing.

Education, Nursing↗
PubMed1983

Caring for Southeast Asian refugee patients in the USA.

This paper concerns care of refugees from Southeast Asia who speak little English and are relatively unfamiliar with the formal health care system in the United States. It aims to demystify the behaviors of refugee patients and to support health practitioners who are attempting to care for them. Western medicine is discussed in terms of the expectations that refugees tend to hold of it, and of the conflicts with Southeast Asian beliefs and practices which it presents. Despite language differences, health care agents can increase the effectiveness of their communication with persons from Southeast Asia, primarily by allowing for their viewpoints. Topics discussed are: the first encounter with a refugee patient; use of interpreters; obtaining informed consent; "the passive obedient" patient; the "non-compliant" patient; body image; sources of social support for healing; use of medications; traditional self-care practices; and death and depression.

Asia, Southeastern↗
PubMed1983

In search of healers--Southeast Asian refugees in the American health care system.

Healing is the alleviation of sickness, which includes both medically defined problems of pathophysiology (disease) and personal definitions of not being well (illness). Refugees from Southeast Asia now have a special need for healing because their health problems are changing from those of concern to public health, which are well documented and for which there are known effective treatments, to those that are primarily a personal concern and that are difficult to diagnose and treat effectively because of their chronic nature and their cultural and emotional components. The finding among refugees of physical complaints for which there is no identifiable medical cause is explained by cultural tendencies in Southeast Asia that promote focusing on somatic symptomatology, and by a delayed somatic response to refugee trauma. To prevent escalation of medical intervention, physicians need to be sensitive to Southeast Asians' attitudes toward health and their expectations and apprehensions regarding Western medicine.

Asia, Southeastern↗
PubMed1979

An explication of 'wind illness' in northern Thailand.

'Wind illness' is a very common complaint among the Northern Thai, yet is rarely recognized by Thai physicians trained in biomedicine. Persons most susceptible to 'wind illness' are adult women who have ever borne a child. Consequently, data were obtained from 415 everparous women, 43% of whom reported ever having had 'wind illness' and 57%. never having had it. In addition, 20 individuals who had ever had the syndrome were followed for case study, and 13 indigenous healers who traditionally treat clients suffering 'wind illness' were interviewed. Their perceptions of the etiology, symptomatology and treatment of 'wind illness' are reported in Part I. Part II is an attempt to define 'wind illness' in terms of biomedicine and as a consequence of fertility. Part III synthesized the emic and etic accounts with explanations for the perdurance of 'wind illness' despite the advances of biomedicine and the recent fertility decline in Northern Thailand.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Worries and worriers in Thailand.

How the health and well-being of families in northern Thailand might be gendered and class linked was assessed. First, ethnographic data were gathered to contextualize and elaborate the local meanings of the indigenous concepts kaan khit maak, "thinking-a-lot," and kaan khit maak kern pai, "thinking-too-much." What informants were thinking a lot about was assessed. The health implications of the concept of "thinking-too-much" were then evaluated in 318 middle-aged women and their 24-year-old children (147 daughters and 154 sons) using the Symptoms of Stress Inventory (SOSI). Findings from the SOSI complemented those from fieldwork, demonstrating that both worrying and symptoms of stress were sex linked as well as associated with poverty and with life cycle stage. It is recommended that educational programs to promote khwaan khit pen, the "ability to think", among the disadvantaged of society be resumed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗