Elder Patients’ Choice In Township Areas From The Perspective Of Agency

Modern society increasingly emphasizes patient autonomy and agency,believing that patients should be the first to take charge of their own health.The autonomy and agency of the patient is first and foremost reflected in the autonomy to make health care choices.The research question in this paper is: How does the agency of the elderly in township areas affect their choices of health care? This paper will use the agency perspective to analyze patients’ health care choices.The agency perspective means that we do not view the ability of older adults to make health care choices as homogeneous,but rather we look at the life course of older adults to see what abilities are needed to make health care choices,how older adults develop these abilities,how older adults’ expectations of the future influence older adults’ health care choices in the present,and how older adults make health care choices with a sense of reality.The agency perspective provides three important concepts for looking at the health care choices of older adults in township areas: selective attention,problematization,and executive competence.This paper describes the social process of health care choice of older adults in township areas by dividing their health care choices into four interrelated stages: health care need generation,health care timing,health care location selection,and health care decision making.In health care need generation,medically defined health care needs are sometimes not translated into patient perceived health care needs.Medical options rely on patients actively problematizing and medicalizing their bodies.After learning about medicine and consulting with medical professionals,older adults in township areas can understand their bodies in a more medical way.Seniors in township areas will leave the interpretation of their bodies to specific professionals and choose whether to accept a medical professional’s diagnosis and treatment of their bodies.The medicalization of the body by older adults in township areas is influenced not only by local community knowledge,but also by everyday situations.Contexts motivate people to act according to daily norms rather than being disrupted by unexpected events.Literacy,ability to travel,affordability,and the ability to mobilize friends and family are antecedents of older adults’ ability to execute health care choices.For older adults who lack the ability to perform,there is no alternative to the health care services of the primary health system.In the choice of treatment options,the motivation of the rural elderly is manifested in the purposeful and directional selection of treatment options that are suitable for them and the comprehensive consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of various treatment options.The motivation of the elderly in township areas in the choice of treatment options sometimes manifests itself as a confrontation with the authority of doctors,which sometimes makes it impossible to achieve good treatment wishes.