Italians and immigrants’ chronic patients’ representation of health and medical care: a semantic and discourse analysis approach

This study explores health and medical carerepresentation of immigrant and native Italian chronic patients. 60 semi-structured interviews were conducted comprising Italian (Mage= 66.12, SD= 13.14) and regular immigrant patients (Mage= 51.65, SD= 13.16). All interviews were administered only to participants’ understating Italian languageandfluentspeakers. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed with agreement between judges and discourse analysis method. Findings highlighted six main topics related to the experience with health services, the perception, and representation of patients’ health, the consequences of chronic disease and the seek for coping strategies to face their illness, housing and working conditions, and the need for the psychological figure. The prevalence of specific words within these topics and their semantic meaning were discussed underlining crucial differences between immigrant and Italian chronic patients’ priorities.