Exploring Foreign Domestic Workers’ Perceived Contextual Factors That Influence Their Participation in Medical Consultations: An Ecological Lens

ABSTRACT

Foreign domestic workers have reported various health problems after moving to Hong Kong, which suggests the need for them to seek medical attention. Yet, much uncertainty exists about their perception of healthcare experiences as patients, particularly how they perceive their communication with ethnic-discordant healthcare providers. Drawing on foreign domestic workers’ perspectives, we extracted non-interpersonal factors from Street’s ecological model and its extension proposed by Head and Bute (2018) and examined how foreign domestic workers perceived these contextual factors affected their communication with healthcare providers. Thematic analysis was conducted on thirty Filipina and Indonesian domestic workers’ narratives. Our findings confirmed that the context of digital media (characterized by Internet use and the adoption of a telemedicine approach) and the context of social ties (characterized by employers’ involvement and everyday communication with friends and peers) were both potential contextual factors that domestic workers reported accounted for their participation in medical encounters. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Future research building on these findings is proposed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Bahasa is the official language of Indonesia, and Tagalog is the official language of the Philippines.

2. Participants’ narratives about the distinction between friends and peers are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

3. The “two-week rule” stipulates that FDWs, once their contract is terminated, must depart Hong Kong within two weeks unless they find another employer during that period, which predisposes FDWs to abuse at the hands of employers (Cheung et al., 2019; Lai & Li, 2019). In addition, deprivation of privacy, extended working hours, and insufficient sleeping space leave FDWs exposed to possible instances of exploitation and abuse (Lai & Fong, 2020). These possible consequences reveal the precarious position many FDWs find themselves in.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.