Fear in Healthcare Settings, Myth or Reality: A Case Study of the Private Healthcare Sector in Mauritius

The purpose of this paper is to investigate patient fear and the factors that could possibly trigger this phenomenon in Mauritian`s private healthcare settings. A mixed-methods approach was considered to fulfilling the research aim. The research sample comprised 27 healthcare professionals and 411 private healthcare customers (patients). A scale with 11 patient fear attributes and one open-ended question were used in quantitative and qualitative data collection respectively. Descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA and Grounded Theory method were used to analyze the data. The results reveal that patient fear is a reality and an underestimated aspect of care in Mauritian`s private healthcare settings. Major factors causing patient fear to arise are the cost of the treatment, the ability to pay the bill and the treatment outcome among others. Properly understanding those factors and adjusting the service delivery accordingly were considered to be crucial in effectively managing patient fear, however other results suggest that such fear is instead being exploited by private healthcare organizations. Patients are becoming increasingly aware that their fears are even in certain cases being triggered or aggravated by private healthcare professionals in an attempt to convince them to purchase more services quickly and expensively. Consequently, other important aspects of care such as patient trust and patient compliance were found to be adversely affected. Moreover statistically significant differences in the degree of fear between patients of different age groups and income groups were also obtained. The study acts as a guide to ensure that the best measures to efficiently manage patient fear throughout the healthcare delivery can be determined and applied thus ensuring to deal with better-informed patients in an honest, fair and trustworthy manner. For instance results highlight the importance for healthcare providers to preserve human touch when dealing with patients in an effort to alleviate their fears and create reasonably positive experiences irrespective of the treatment outcome. Results following One-Way ANOVA analysis and Tukey HSD post hoc test exposed the difference in degree of fear between patients based on simple factors such as age group or income group. This implies that healthcare providers should ensure that they develop and adopt different approaches to handle patient fear effectively and not attempt to develop and adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Moreover that the 'fear handling mechanism' established is ingrained in their service culture not only to prevent adverse effects on other vital aspects of care including patient trust and patient compliance but also and mostly to optimize the patient journey. The study also attempts to increase awareness about patient fear in private healthcare settings by exposing the major factors that normally trigger this phenomenon as well as the most common fear-related behaviors. The study moreover highlights the importance for the public to not relinquish their rights to receiving healthcare services whereby proper acknowledgement and management of their fears are regarded as fundamental aspects of care delivery. It is vital to comprehend that although managing patient fear is important, maintaining a patient-centric approach in doing so is as important. The study not only measures the level of patient fear but it also offers, through the qualitative data obtained unique insights on fear from the patient's perspective. Healthcare organizations can eventually adjust their service delivery accordingly to optimize the patient experience.