Prisoners’ experience and perceptions of health care in Australian prisons: a qualitative study

Abstract

Purpose Patient-centred care is a key approach used in Australia for the delivery of quality health care, and understanding experiences and perceptions is a key part to this. This paper aims to explore prisoners’ experiences and perceptions of health-care service provision in New South Wales, Australia. Design/methodology/approach In February and March 2017, 24 focus groups, consisting of 128 participants, were undertaken using semi-structured interviews that explored experiences of health care in prison. Findings A conceptualisation of the prisoners’ health-care experience around the core category of access to health care emerged from the data. Enablers or barriers to this access were driven by three categories: a prison construct – how the prisoners “see” the prison system influencing access to health care; a health-care system construct – how the prisoners “see” the prison health-care system and the pathways to navigate it; and personal factors. Communication was the category with the greatest number of relational connections. Research limitations/implications This study takes a pragmatic approach to the analysis of data, the findings forming the basis for a future quantitative study. The findings identify communication as a key issue for access to health care. Originality/value This study provides first-hand accounts of enablers and barriers to accessing health-care services in the prison environment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to identify access to health care as a core category and is of value to health workers and researchers that work with the prison population.