1st year Flashcards
ADL
Activities of Daily Living (ADLs)
Used routinely as a measurement of the functional status of a person, particularly in regards to people with disabilities and the elderly.
Birth Rate
Is a summary rate based on the number of live births in a population over a given period of time, usually one year.
Clinical Audit
Quality improvement process - seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria and the implementation of change.
Clinical Effectiveness
The degree to which the organisation is ensuring that ‘best practice’, based on evidence of effectiveness where such evidence exists, is used.
Coping
The process of managing stress
Critical Appraisal
The process of carefully and systematically examining research to judge its trustworthiness, and its value and relevance in a particular context.
Culture
“Culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs, etc” Tyler, 1874.
“Systems of shared ideas, systems of concepts and rules and meanings that underlie and are expressed in the ways that human beings live” Keesing, 1981.
Disease
A physiological or psychological dysfunction. The same biological process in each individual who suffers it.
Disease Prevention
Refers to measures taken to prevent diseases, (or injuries) rather than curing them or treating their symptoms.
Ethnicity
Refers to cultural practices and outlooks that characterise and distinguish a certain group of people. Characteristics identifying an ethnic group may include a common language, common customs and beliefs and tradition. This term is preferred over ‘race’.
Gender
Refer to the social implication of being male or female, including differences in the way women and men think, behave or interact in society. Gender patterns vary both within and between societies.
Hazard
The potential to cause harm
Health Promotion
The process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. Applied to a wide range of approaches to improving health of people, communities and populations.
Illness
A person’s experience or subjective notion of being ill.
It is influenced by other features (such as age, personality, personal circumstances and previous experience).
Incidence
Is the number of new cases of a disease in a population in a defined period of time. Tells us something about trends in causation and the aetiology of disease.
Infant Mortality Rate
A measure of the rate of deaths (usually in one year) in children less than one year old with the number of live births in the same year as the denominator. This is often cited as a useful indicator of the level of health in a community.
Mortality Rate - The Death Rate - All cause mortality
All-cause mortality: a measure of the number of deaths (from any cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size that population usually expressed per 1,000 or 100,000 persons per year – this may sometimes be referred to as ‘crude death rate’.
Mortality rte - The death rate - disease (cause) specific mortality
Disease (cause)-specific mortality: the number of deaths due to a given disease (cause) per time, usually expressed per 1,000 or 100,000 persons per year.
Prevalence
The number (proportion) or individuals with a disease at a given point in time (point prevalence) or within a defined interval (period prevalence).
Quality of life
The general well-being of individuals and societies. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is a multi-dimensional concept that includes domains related to physical, mental, emotional and social functioning, and focuses on the impact health status has on quality of life.
QUALY
Is a measure of disease burden, including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. It is used in assessing the value for money of an intervention. The QALY is based on the number of years of life that would be added by the intervention.
Race
A group of people linked by biological or genetic factors. This term should not be used to describe different social groups which is ‘ethnicity’.
Risk
A measure of the likelihood of harm occurring
Self-Efficacy
A person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in, or manage, a particular situation
Sex
The biological characteristics of men and women
Social class
Is a form of social stratification (layering of society). The most common occupational classification currently in use, and used in Britain since the 1911 Census (with minor variation over time), has six social classes: I (professionals); II (managerial and technical); III(a) (skilled: non-manual); III(b) (skilled: manual); IV (partly skilled manual); V (unskilled).
Stress
The body’s response to the demands placed upon it
The Sick Role
The traditionally temporary, medically sanctioned role of being sick
