Impact of delaying seeking medical attention

In the first place when you begin to feel ill, you realise you don’t know how to access medical attention, so you may delay seeking help in the hope that the problem will resolve itself. When people experience difficulty in contacting the appropriate source of help or care, more time is lost until the proper healthcare provider is accessed.

Other people tend to try to manage themselves. They Google the symptoms and self-diagnose, which may or may not work, but can also delay accessing services and can lead to a miss diagnosis. The implications of this are that your illness may have progressed further than needs be and, as a result, is more difficult and takes longer to treat.

Exploring this type of situation can help us to get an idea of how people experience things that many of us take for granted and know intrinsically.