Health Care Seeking Behavior

The common disease that the geriatric population suffers from are type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Alzheimer’s disease, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, prostatic hypertrophy, cataracts, macular degeneration, cancer, etc. and at the same time, they are vulnerable to infections involving respiratory (including TB), urinary and digestive tract.16 In India, the elderly people suffer from dual medical problems, i.e., both communicable as well as non– communicable diseases. This is further compounded by impairment of special sensory functions like vision and hearing. A decline in immunity as well as age-related physiologic changes leads to an increased burden of communicable

Definition:
There is no common definition agreed upon by sociologists in any sociology literature. Different definitions may be used in different studies, despite referring to the same activity. According to sociology literature, health care seeking behaviour will be influenced by the individual self, diseases, and the availability and accessibility of health services. Depending on these determinants and their interactions , health care seeking behaviour is a complex outcome of many factors operating at individual, family, and community level.19
Health Care Seeking Behavior (HCSB) refers to decision or an action taken by an individual to maintain, attain, or regain good health and to prevent illness. The decisions made encompasses all available health care options like visiting a public or private and modern or traditional health facility, self-medication and use of home remedies or not to utilize the available health services etc. Planning for health care services provision depends on the health needs and HSB of the population. Determining the health care seeking behavior is essential to provide need based health care services to the population. The desired HSB has been related to visiting official channels in a formally recognized health care system. Healthcare-seeking behavior is influenced by availability, quality and price of services as well as to social group, health views, residences and personal features of the users. Besides peoples’ choice of health care differs

Only through a deeper understanding of the intricate factors shaping behavioural practices can health promotion programmes and or interventions successfully be introduced into the realities of the people’s lives to bring about changes in health behaviour. Behaviour change theories and models such as the Health Belief Model (HBM), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), and the Transtheoretical Model have been widely applied in public health in an attempt to explain or predict health seeking behaviours. Their use enables identification and understanding of people’s health-seeking behaviour beyond their knowledge, attitudes and practices. HBM is a health specific behavioural cognitive model The model is based on the idea that people are more likely to change their behaviour and adhere to treatments if: (i) they perceive that they are at risk of contracting the disease (perceived susceptibility), (ii) they perceive the disease might have an unfavourable outcome (perceived severity), (iii) they perceive the proposed health behaviour to be both effective and practical (perceived benefits), (iv)they perceive the barriers to adopting the behaviour to be minimal (perceived barriers),(v) they perceive themselves to have the ability of applying and practicing the specific behaviour proposed