An autoethnography of a patient with kidney renal failure - how experiences and social ties promote therapeutic mobility

Abstract

This paper deals with the determinants that encourage therapeutic mobility from Senegal to France. I am both a patient and a researcher and my thesis focused on how health professionals make decisions to refer patients to a dialysis method. I also underlined how patients with kidney failure construct their choice of dialysis method. As a patient in Senegal, a low income country, I experienced some difficulties due to insufficient human resources in the health sector, the little number of dialysis centers, medical pluralism and low performance of the health system. . Choosing a dialysis method depended on many factors such as doctors’ opinions, my family’s approach and my student status at that time, among other things. That situation resulted in the involvement of health professionals, of my family, who both talked me into going to France in order to get a kidney transplant. Therefore, I will analyse therapeutic mobility as the outcome of social factors and personal experience beyondsocial bifurcations. Then, I propose here, from my experience, how to move from low performance health system (Senegal) to a high performance one (France) through an autoethnography analysis.