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 .
