Flames. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the media, and sometimes political gaze, to the populations most exposed to contagion and the least well treated. But to understand what social inequalities in health are, it is important to also look at populations with privileged access to health infrastructure.
“State-of-the-art” hospital services are usually the most socially selective: they receive a proportion of more affluent patients than less innovative services and less equipped to deal with serious pathologies. In obstetrics and gynecology, however, the situation is the opposite: it is the advanced hospital services which are socially the most mixed, and while they are not medically the most advanced, certain private maternities are socially the most selective. Maud Gelly, Paula Cristofalo and Clélia Gasquet-Blanchard conducted a survey by observation and interviews in several maternity hospitals in the Ile-de-France region, one of which is attended exclusively by women belonging to the national and international bourgeoisie, some being determined to give birth there even as their state of health would require a follow-up in a hospital, public, of higher technical level. In their article recently published in the “Critical health” dossier of Social science research proceedings, the three researchers wonder about what makes the exceptional character of this maternity hospital in the eyes of the women who give birth there.
Like at the hotel
Thus, the comfort of the rooms, the quality of the meals, the personalization of treatment schedules, an interpretation service for non-French speakers make the stay in this maternity unit an experience that patients qualify as restful or compare to a stay in a hospital. multi-star hotel. But, probably more surprisingly, the attraction of this maternity rests at least as much on care and medical procedures accessible elsewhere – genetic tests, cesarean section, first bath of the infant… – and which appear here as exceptional benefits. The first are offered in an extensive and routine manner, the second is carried out without any medical necessity, the third is transformed into an infant thalassotherapy session.
The three researchers show how an “ordinary” medical service is thus adapted to meet the expectations of this patient group – who is at least as much a clientele – well-off, able to assume, directly or through their insurance, significant costs. . The medical, paramedical and hotel services offered allow patients not only to maintain a high level of comfort consistent with their life outside the maternity ward, but also to better control the effects of pregnancy and childbirth on their time and their body. – the programming of unnecessary cesarean sections is attached to it -, delegating a large part of the tasks related to the care of infants and, finally, receiving highly personalized attention. Public maternity hospitals, even medically more advanced, appear to them to be the opposite of these expectations. The international success of the maternity hospital studied, largely driven by specific services according to nationalities, also acts as an additional element of prestige – while too many foreign patients are seen, in many hospital services, as a problem.
You have 9.5% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.