Defining Health Flashcards
What are the factors affecting our understanding of health?
Our education and training
Cultural factors
The context we live in
One’s own personal interests
Definition of illness
Illness refers to the subjective sense of feeling unwell. illness does not define a specific pathology but refers to a person’s subjective experience of it such as discomfort tiredness and general malaise
Two ways we classify illness and disease
Acute illness and chronic illness.
acute is typically characterized by severe symptoms of relatively short duration
chronic is one that lasts for an extended period usually 6 months or longer and often for person’s life.
How does Suchman describe five stages of illness
Stage 1 symptoms experiences Stage 2 assumption of the sick role confirmation from family and friends Stage 3 medical Care contact Stage 4 dependent llandro Stage 5 recovery or rehabilitation
The impact of illness on the client
Loss of autonomy self concept and Body Image changes lifestyle changes
Impact of illness family changes
-Role changes task reassignments -Increased demand on time. -Anxiety about outcomes -Change in social customs Loneliness and financial problems.
Define sickness
It is the way a patient reports symptoms which is influenced by his or her cultural background
so sickness refers to socially and culturally held Concepts or conceptions of health conditions for example of the dread of Cancer or the stigma of mental illness which in turn influence how the patient reacts to it
Definition of disease
Disease implies a focus on pathological processes that may or may not produce symptoms and that is held in a patient’s illness
for example a patient complains of tiredness and malaise his ILLNESS as he experiences it he consults a doctor about it because he believes that he might have a SICKNESS the doctor might attribute the patient’s symptoms to a Thyroid condition a DISEASE
Natural history of disease
This refers to the course of a disease over a period of time unaffected by treatment
The clinical course of a disease
- Exposure to pathogen
- From the biological onset of disease to when symptoms appear that is what we call the preclinical phase.
- From when symptoms appear to the outcome that’s the clinical phase
the clinical phase involves the diagnosis and therapy or treatment, possible Relapse, change in therapy outcomes or when the person is cured or they are living with the disease or deteriorated and died that’s all within the clinical phase
The stage of susceptibility
This involves the risk factors that favours the occurrence of a disease operating in this stage.
Host factors like the person their age, sex, race family history and nutritional status
the environmental factors or exposure to the infectious agents obesity high blood pressure or hypertension coronary artery disease
during this stage the person remains free of Clinical diseases
Stage of pre-symptomatic disease
Three important factors here the host the agent and the environment. These interact to initiate pathogenic changes that is adequate to cause a disease
that disease does NOT at this stage clinically manifest
Stage of Clinical disease
In this stage the particular signs and symptoms develop. during this stage a disease can be sub classified to its own security grades.
Stages of terminations
Disease terminate and follow the following trends:
- Spontaneous resolution no sequels
- Settles down but with some sequels
- and then the other one result in deaths of the patient
Lay definitions for health
Absence of disease
physical fitness
functional ability
