Cultural (medical) ideas of long-term care patients during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic: mechanism and formation of cultural knowledge in an uncertain situation

In the period of the new corona virus spread we saw major changes in traditional daily living in total uncertainty. This work investigates the experience of making therapeutic decisions by long-term care patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Theoretically, the long-established medical decision patterns introduced into the chronic patients’ daily living can stop being effective in a such situation. Conceptually, the study was based on the core principles of the cognitive medical anthropology, when human cultural ideas about the disease and its treatment become fundamental for therapeutic decision making. In the pandemic time, formation of new knowledge about the virus, its consequences, its interaction with chronic diseases ran in the “here and now” mode. The research was to describe the mechanisms of the prepandemic cultural knowledge and creation of new knowledge in an unconventional situation that the long-term care patients had as the most important factor for the patient choice. Within the investigation framework, 11 depth interviews with chronically ill people were held.
The carried out analysis enabled to distinguish two basic models of long-term patients’ medical decision during the pandemic: (1) the model, comprising correction of a prepandemic treatment regimen and (2) the model, omitting correction of a prepandemic treatment regimen. The cultural (medical) knowledge and the problem of health care access proved to be the primary factors, affecting the long-term care patients’ medical decision in the pandemic period. The paper also describes the role of personal experience and the experience of “significant others”, “expert knowledge”, “stories of other people” (experience of unfamiliar people).