[The understanding of health, illness and care by Turkish immigrant women. An empirical study]

The opportunities for and parameters of individual care are determined by an understanding of the patient's sociocultural and biographical context. As a presupposition for patient-centred nursing care nurses, therefore, need a soundly based knowledge of the manifold cultural ways of coping with everyday demands, especially in crises as brought on by illness. In a qualitative study on the understanding of illness, health and care 10 Turkish women, all of whom are experienced in lay care within their own families, were interviewed. The interviews were analysed with reference to the "Development Research Sequence" of James Spradley. This method filters out cultural themes from the subjective views of the informants that centre round the topics of health, illness and care within the family, views that determine both the everyday knowledge and the activities of the women. The study is based on the two assumptions that firstly patient-specific variables, sociocultural factors, the family and the social network have to be taken into consideration if professional nursing care is to succeed and secondly that the process of immigration has effects on the understanding of illness, health and care as well as on the lay care practices which are specific to each generation and become significant for the care of family members in immigrant families. Examples will be used in writing up the results of the enquiry.