6. Lay Health Beliefs [incomplete]

Question 1

Why do health beliefs matter?

Answer 1

Affects:

• Treatment compliance
• Trust in profession
• They affect how people access services
• Influence health behaviours
• Placebo & nocebo effect

Question 2

What is lay health beliefs?

Answer 2

Beliefs about health & illness held by non-professionals

Not always necessary correct, but shaped by person’s environment e.g. structural location, cultural context & social identity

• Illness behaviour learned in childhood
• Health belief model

Question 3

What are the variables for the health belief model?

Answer 3

Individual perception:

• Degree of perceived risk of a disease
• includes perceived susceptibility of contracting a disease & its perceived severity once the disease is contracted.

Modifying factors:

• include demographic variables, perceived threat & cues to action
• Demographic variables- age, sex, ethnicity, social class
• cues to action- internal e.g. feeling pain, external e.g. public health campaigns

Likelihood of action:

• Balance between perceived benefits & perceived barriers to behaviour change to minimise risk of disease
• Likelihood of engaging in recommended preventive health behaviours to minimise risk off disease

Question 4

Definition of belief?

Answer 4

Mental conviction

- an idea that isn’t necessarily substantiated with evidence.

Question 5

Definition of expertise?

Answer 5

Expert opinion or knowledge.

Often obtained through action of submitting a matter to, & its consideration by, experts.

Question 6

What is medical dominance?

Answer 6

• Profession’s authority to determine what is to be counted as sickness.
• Medical dominance over patients.
• Medical dominance over other progressions (nursing, profession allied to medicine) in terms of division of health-related labour.

*present in 1950’s

Question 7

Why was there a decline in medical dominance?

Answer 7

• rise of individual responsibility:
• Rise of managerialism in health service
• Development in nursing practice
• Increasing importance of patient voices in health
• Changing social conceptualisations of expertise (influences by new media technologies).
• Social movement e.g. disability rights have challenged medical authority

Question 8

How have lay health beliefs changed overtime?

Answer 8

1970’s
- professional dominance

1990s onwards-
- greater weight given to lived experience of illness & disability (patient & public involvement).
- Different forms of expertise, not ignorance vs expertise.
Shift from talking about lay beliefs to talking about lay knowledge & lay epidemiology.
- Emergence of experts-by-experience.

Question 9

What is an ‘expert patient’?

Answer 9

In an era where health funding is restricted, patient expertise & self-management become valuable features of the health service

• Internet means there is access to health info
• Patients need to distinguish between what can be managed through self-care & what needs expert attention.