Are Polish Primary Care Practitioners Social Entrepreneurs?

In this article I explore the range of entrepreneurial roles played by doctors working in Polish Primary Health Care [Podstawowa Opieka Zdrowotna – POZ]. I use the division into social and strictly business entrepreneurship – whose source comes from economic sciences – in order to examine what entrepreneurial values rural/small town doctors and their city colleagues recognise and use in their practices. POZ is mainly carried out in private clinics contracted by the National Health Fund [Narodowy Fundusz Zdrowia - NFZ], therefore I look at the values associated with entrepreneurship. I consider these values as visibly altering doctor–patient encounters, thus I analyse doctor’s strategies for establishing his/ her formal and informal relations with patients. I focus my attention on the specific forms of experiencing time in primary care, namely short and long time structures, which I recognise as crucial for interactions between practitioners and their patients. Finally, I put forward the thesis that much of the interaction in POZ offices has the characteristics of symbolic exchange - the reciprocal forms of doctor–patient interactions transfer these encounters beyond purely medical interventions to spaces of mutual cooperation, attachment and trust.