Thinking About The Patient Flashcards
What is psychology
the scientific study of the mind and how it influences our behaviour (communication, memory, thought and emotion) and our health and the consequences of this.
How is psychology used in medicine
There is a strong relationship between psychological and physical illness and psychological factors can effect treatment outcomes.
It therefore used to help change unhealthy behaviour e.g. smoking.
Ill patients suffer physically and mentally
Psychological factors influence health directly e.g. chronically occurring environmental stressors are known to harm health.
What is sociology
Sociology shows how our thoughts and behaviours either when we are ill or healthy are shaped by the social and cultural contexts in which we behaving and thinking.
How is sociology applicable to medicine
Medical intervention often falls on individual biological or psychology and neglects wider social forces e.g poverty that might shape individual biology or psychology. Sociology changes this.
This model of health highlights social determinants of health.
Social determinants of health show us disadvantages starts before birth and accumulates through life.
Therefore, sociology helps shift perspective from immediate personal situation to wider society and to recognise this connection.
It links the health of individuals and communities as being a result of complex and interactive social, economic, environmental and personal factors.
They allow us to see how health and illness relates to social institutions e.g. family, work, education.
What are the social determinants of health
The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, age, live, work.
mostly responsible for health inequities – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.
They include:
Economic stability
Social and community context
Neighbourhood & environment
Health care
Education
What is health (biomedical model)
sees health as the absence of disease
Each disease has a single specific cause
Focuses on the physical biological factors (biochemistry, pathology, physiology) and excludes psychological, environmental and social influences.
Target all research & interventions at this causal agent i.e. germ, radiation, toxic chemical, gene (i.e. using human genome project)
considered to be the predominant model of diagnosis in western medicine
What is health (nettleton)
defines biological model in 5 dimensions MMRIT
- Mind-body dualism (mind and body treated as separate entities)
- Mechanistic (body is regarded as a machine that can be fixed)
- Reductionist (driven by germ theory) (explanation of disease focuses on biological changes)
- It is a model that has over-reliance on Technology
- Ignores social, cultural, biographical & environmental explanations
Who’s definition of Health
“A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
What are the disadvantages of the WHO definition of health
It has more recently been argued that the WHO definition is not useful because its emphasis on “complete physical, mental and social wellbeing” is too absolute to be achievable for most people in the world; it is an ideal rather than a realistic goal.
What is the personal definition of health
A person’s definition of being healthy may align with an absence of disease but it may also coexist with it.
People may ‘live well’ and report good health when living with chronic illness for example, and social factors such as good support networks are known to influence this.
People across different cultures and societies, and at different moments in history, think about health and illness in diverging ways.
The personal definition of health that a person holds will therefore impact their engagements with medicine and their conceptualisations of what it means to be ill, to be well or to recover.
These are the types of definitions of health that we may hold:
• Health as not-ill
• Health as absence of disease
• Health despite disease
• Health as a reserve
• Health as a behaviour (i.e. healthy lifestyle)
• Health as a function (being able to do things)
• Health as physical fitness
• Health as psycho-social wellbeing (purely mental state)
• Health as spiritual wellbeing
• Health as energy, vitality
• Health as positive social relationships (family, friends, community)
What is the explanatory model (joe)
beliefs that a person holds about the cause of their illness, the personal and social meaning they attach to it, and their expectations and wishes regarding its course and their recovery.
Explanatory models are never solely individual; they are profoundly shaped by the social and cultural contexts of a person’s life.
we can have different explanatory models co-existing
What is medicine as a profession
It is the humanist profession. How humans work, how their bodies work, the response to disease.
This knowledge is all focused towards the promotion of health and wellbeing and prevention and relief of suffering.
What is humanism
Humanism is a recent development (dating to renaissance) it is a philosophy.
It shifts the focus - instead of focusing on divine (religion), the focus was much more on humans and their experiences and lives, and the things that effect humans e.g. natural world.
Science and study of nature was central to movement of humanism for the goal of improving human experience.
What are the key elements of humanism
All individuals should be respected by default.
All human being have equal worth! (things you do cannot change this)
Human happiness should be optimised and suffering should be reduced
The most effective path to achieve this is through the use of science and evidence.
