AI Article Synopsis

  • The study explores how delays in breast cancer care are currently understood, highlighting a need for new perspectives.
  • The traditional view attributes delays to factors related to patients, providers, or systems, but this approach fails to consider the surrounding social context.
  • By introducing critical realism, the authors argue it can better explain how social inequalities impact access to breast cancer care and suggest future research should adopt this framework.

Article Abstract

Purpose/objectives: To examine how delays in breast cancer care currently are conceptualized and to introduce philosophical and theoretical tenets of critical realism as an alternative approach.

Data Sources: Health and social sciences literature.

Data Synthesis: Diagnostic and treatment delays in breast cancer most frequently are conceptualized as patient, provider, or system related. The approach has limited utility in guiding explanatory analysis because it does not acknowledge the social context in which the delays occur. The philosophical tenets of critical realism and two related theoretical approaches are an alternative. They illustrate how an individual's biologic, social, and material resources may undermine or support structural inequities in access to breast cancer care.

Conclusions: Critical realism provides a useful framework for analysis of links between social inequalities and delays in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Implications For Nursing: Access to breast cancer care could be better understood and conceptualized by basing future research and theoretical endeavors on a critical realist perspective.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1188/06.ONF.E62-E70DOI Listing

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