School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand.
Res Social Adm Pharm. 2011 Mar;7(1):81-92. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2010.01.002. Epub 2010 Apr 10.
Samoan people have access to and use both Western and traditional forms of healing. Little is known about their perceptions and use of healing agents.
To explore Samoan people's interpretation and use of a subset of Western medicines, namely, antibiotics, in Samoa and in New Zealand.
Semi-structured interviews were held with a purposeful sample of 31 Samoans, recruited through informal networks. Thematic analysis focused on understanding participants' perspectives on antibiotics using a phenomenological approach. Results from these interviews were used to develop a questionnaire administered to 232 Samoans recruited in health care facilities in Samoa and New Zealand.
Participants were mostly females (57% of structured interview participants), and most (88%) were born in Samoa. Nearly half the sample had tertiary education. In Western terms, confusion about what antibiotics do and lack of clarity about which medicines are antibiotics were very common among the Samoan population. Antibiotics are commonly believed to be useful for colds and flu (75% of respondents) and were frequently used for these conditions. The distinctive features of the responses were the belief that antibiotics are pain killers (50%) and confusion between infection and pain. The confusion between antibiotics and pain killers may reflect a conflict between Samoan and Western concepts of illness. In the Samoan view, the lived experience of illness appears to be conflated with the illness itself; that is, pain is seen as an illness.
The findings have implications for attempts to promote rational use of antibiotics either with individuals or as a part of public education campaigns. Such efforts may fail in some communities if they are based on the assumption that people share Western beliefs about what antibiotics are; what they do; and which illness have microbial, bacterial, or viral causes.
萨摩亚人既可以获得和使用西方传统的治疗方法。人们对他们对治疗药物的看法和使用知之甚少。
探索萨摩亚人对包括抗生素在内的部分西方药物的解释和使用情况，该研究在萨摩亚和新西兰进行。
通过非正式网络，对有目的选择的 31 名萨摩亚人进行半结构式访谈。采用现象学方法，通过主题分析重点理解参与者对抗生素的看法。对这些访谈结果进行总结，并制定了一份调查问卷，对萨摩亚和新西兰医疗机构的 232 名萨摩亚人进行调查。
参与者主要是女性（结构性访谈参与者的 57%），大多数（88%）在萨摩亚出生。近一半的参与者接受过高等教育。从西方的角度来看，萨摩亚人群普遍对抗生素的作用感到困惑，并且对哪些药物是抗生素缺乏明确的认识。抗生素通常被认为对感冒和流感有用（75%的受访者），并且经常用于这些疾病。回答的特点是认为抗生素是止痛药（50%），以及将感染和疼痛混淆。将抗生素和止痛药混淆可能反映了萨摩亚和西方对疾病概念的冲突。在萨摩亚的观念中，疾病的经历似乎与疾病本身相混淆；也就是说，疼痛被视为一种疾病。
这些发现对试图促进个体或作为公众教育运动的一部分合理使用抗生素具有重要意义。如果这些努力基于人们对抗生素的作用、用途以及哪些疾病具有微生物、细菌或病毒原因的西方观念的假设，那么在某些社区可能会失败。
