Are Polish Primary Care Practitioners Social Entrepreneurs?

Authors

Keywords:

Poland, primary care, social entrepreneurship, doctor-patient relations

Abstract

In this article I explore the range of entrepreneurial roles played by doctors working in Polish Primary Health Care [Podstawowa Opieka Zdrowotna – POZ]. I use the division into social and strictly business entrepreneurship – whose source comes from economic sciences – in order to examine
what entrepreneurial values rural/small town doctors and their city colleagues recognise and use in their practices. POZ is mainly carried out in private clinics contracted by the National Health Fund [Narodowy Fundusz Zdrowia – NFZ], therefore I look at the values associated with entrepreneurship. I consider these values as visibly altering doctor–patient encounters, thus I analyse doctor’s strategies for establishing his/ her formal and informal relations with patients. I focus my attention on the specific forms of experiencing time in primary care, namely short and long time structures, which I recognise as crucial for interactions between practitioners and their patients. Finally, I put forward the thesis that much of the interaction in POZ offices has the characteristics of symbolic exchange – the reciprocal forms of doctor–patient interactions transfer these encounters beyond purely medical interventions to spaces of mutual cooperation, attachment and trust.

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Author Biography

Hubert Wierciński, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw

PhD in ethnology

References

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Published

2019-12-15

How to Cite

Wierciński, H. (2019). Are Polish Primary Care Practitioners Social Entrepreneurs?. Ethnologia Polona, 40, 169–186. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ethp/article/view/30