Definitions Flashcards
ADLs
Activities of Daily Living
Daily self-care activities - used routinely as a measurement of the functional status of a person, particularly in regards to people with disabilities and the elderly.
Birth rate
No. of live births in a population over a given time
Clinical audit
A quality improvement process that 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 best practice based on evidence of effectiveness where such evidence exists.
Coping
The process of managing stress.
Critical appraisal
The process of carefully and systemically examining research to judge its trustworthiness and its value and relevance in a particular context.
Culture
A complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, cuisine etc.
or
Systems of shared ideas, systems of concepts and rules and meaning that underlie and are expressed in the ways that human beings live.
Disease
A physiological or psychological dysfunction. As distinct from illness, a disease is essentially the same biological process in each individual who suffers it, where as an illness will be influenced by other features (e.g. age, personality, personal circumstances, previous experience…).
Disease prevention
Measures being taken to prevent diseases or injuries rather than curing on onset of symptoms.
Ethnicity
Cultural practices and outlooks that characterise and distinguish a certain group of people. Characteristics may incl. a common language, common customs and beliefs and traditions. The term is preferred over race.
Gender
Social implication of being male or female, incl. differences in the way men and woman think, behave or interact in society. Gender patterns vary both within and between societies.
Hazard
Is the potential to cause harm.
Health promotion
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. Not to be confused with disease.
Incidence
Number of new cases of a disease in a population in a defined period of time. Tells us about trends in causation and aetiologies of diseases .
Infant mortality rate
Measure of rate of deaths (usually in 1 year) in children less than one yr old with the number of live births in the same year as the denominator. Often cited as a useful indicator of level of health in a community.
Mortality rate
Death rate
All-cause mortality rate
Measure of no of deaths from any cause in a particular population. Usually expressed as per 1,000 or 100,000.
AKA - crude death rate.
Disease (cause)-specific mortality rate
No. of deaths due to particular disease or cause, usually expressed per 1,000 or 100,000.
Prevalence
The number of individuals with with a disease at a given point in time (point prevalence) or within a defined interval (period prevalence).
Quality of life
General well-being of individuals and societies. Health-related QoL (HRQoL) is a multidimensional concept that includes domains related to physical, mental, emotional and social functioning and focuses on the impact health status has on QoL.
QUALY
Measure of disease burden, incl. both the quality and quantity of life lived. It is used in assessing the value for money of an intervention. It 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 - ethnicity.
Risk
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 woman.
Social class
Form of social stratification. Most common occupational classification currently in use. 6 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 social role of being sick.
