Understanding the meaning of medication experience among limited English proficient (LEP) Oromo patients in Minnesota

Abstract

Based on Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, immigrants who speak English "less than very well" are entitled to professional language access services (LAS) and all health care providers, including pharmacies, are required to provide such services. However, many pharmacies are not currently complying with these laws. The main purpose of this study is to understand the meaning of the medication experiences among Limited English Proficient (LEP) Oromo patients in Minnesota. Major objectives of this study are: 1) to have a deeper understanding of the lived medication experiences of the research participants, 2) to describe the meaning of these experiences from the perspectives of the participants, and 3) to develop the data into themes and interpret them to uncover the deep, pre-reflexive meaning they attach to their medication experiences.This research follows Max van Mennen's hermeneutic phenomenological methodology to describe and interpret the meaning of the medication experiences of the research participants based on their subjective lived experiences. Interviews were conducted in the Oromo language, taped and transcribed in the Oromo language, and translated into English. In addition to applying hermeneutic phenomenological reflection, the text was analyzed using the holistic, selective, and detailed or line-by-line approaches to explicate essential themes. The data were transformed into text by separating essential themes from incidental themes, and developing the essential themes into text following van Manen's guidelines.The results of the data analysis were organized into six major themes under the heading of research findings in chapter nine (9) as follows: 1) beliefs regarding causes of diseases, 2) beliefs regarding the use of medicine, 3) beliefs regarding diseases that cannot be cured by western medicine, 4) love and hate relationship with prescription medications, 5) mistrust of American health care system, and, 6) lack of communication with their pharmacists. Based on the above six themes, some common characteristics that are unique to the Oromo culture and other characteristics that may be universal to all immigrants were drawn as conclusions and described in chapter nine (9). Finally, discussion of these findings and specific recommendations were given in chapters 10 and 11 respectively.