Belief Model In Health Care

The health belief model comprises of the level of concern, motivation, and previous experiences that individuals have, and the intertwining of these components to explain and predict behaviour in the prevention of an illness (Singapore University of Social Sciences, 2018). The elderly’s access to healthcare are marked by factors such as the elderly’s gender as well as the area that they live in, be it in an urban area or a rural area, where these factors determine the level and type of accessibility to healthcare available for them. This essay mainly discusses the ways in which the health belief model impacts the elderly’s access to healthcare because of the different experiences that these individuals have as well as the differing levels
This indicates their financial insecurity and decreases the affordability of healthcare services and therefore changes their level of motivation about seeking medical attention where they are more likely to brush off their symptoms as not serious enough for medical help. This could worsen their illness when they delay medical treatment where the next episode or relapse of the pain or physical symptom could be debilitating and then they would require emergency care. The elderly persons then may also downplay their symptoms and view their physical ailments as not serious, and not seeking medical attention, preferring to treat their ailments using traditional methods like the use of acupuncture and massage treatments (Lock, 1984) which they also deem as less invasive to their bodies. Furthermore, the elderly persons in the rural areas may find that the biomedical methods of treatment to be too strong (Balagopal, 2009) and therefore develop a preference for the traditional methods of
One of the ways is to provide ensure that medical facilities are available within a certain radius from all villages or communities in the rural areas as well as improving the transportation networks in these areas. The governments, however, has to be willing to set aside resources especially monetarily to fund such initiatives. The use of technology can also be used to alleviate these issues such as the use of telemedicine where communication and information technologies are used to deliver medical advice and care (Health Policy Institute, Georgetown University, 2003) to the residents living in the rural areas. The authorities would have to work alongside telecommunications providers and other bodies to ensure such an initiative is affordable not only for the elderly patients living in the rural areas but also for the service providers. There is also a need to employ medical experts that are able to deliver prompt medical advice that can be easily understood by the patients in