HaDSoc Flashcards
What is equity?
The idea that everyone with the same need should get the same care
(Different to equality)
What is an adverse event?
An injury caused by medical management rather than underlying disease
May be unavoidable (eg px being prescribed a drug for first time and having a reaction)
Or may be preventable (eg administering wrong dosage, operating in wrong part of body)
In James Reasons Framework of Error, what are active failures and latent conditions?
- active failures are acts that lead directly to the patient being harmed
- latent conditions are predisposing conditions that make active failures more likely
What are examples of active failures?
Administering wrong drug dosage
What are some examples of latent conditions?
Too few staff
Poor training
Poor syringe design
Poor supervision
What is the Swiss cheese model?
Some holes are due to active failures and some holes are latent conditions. The holes are hazards and if they line up something can slip through and lead to a loss. The more layers of cheese (ie more safe guarding, defences and barriers) = less chance of hazards lining up
What is clinical governance?
The fact that NHS organisations are accountable to continuously improve the quality of their services and safeguard high standards of care by creating an environment in which clinical care can flourish.
What are some examples of how clinical governance is carried out?
NICE quality standards
CCGs
Financial incentives (both to penalise and reward)
QOF points in primary care
Disclosure of information to the public
Registration and inspection by Care Quality Commission
Junior docs carry out clinical audits and quality improvements
What is an audit?
Quality improvement process that aims to improve patient care by systematic review of care against criteria, and implementation of change
What is the national tariff?
Scheme so that for each HRG, a set fee is paid from commissioners to providers.
The tariffs are based on typical costs, so efficient trusts can make a surplus but inefficient trusts can make a loss.
Never-events receive no payment.
What are some critiques of evidence based practice?
- RCTs not always possible (ethical grounds)
- impossible to collate and maintain so much data
- creates ‘followers’ out of clinicians when it may be more appropriate for them to use their initiative
- requires good faith of pharmaceutical companies (publication bias, rare to see negative studies)
- may be challenging and expensive to implement findings
- inhibits autonomy of clinicians
What issues may arise when bringing EBP into practice?
- clinicians may not be aware of changes
- clinicians may be used to habits
- trusts may not have resources to implement changes (eg time, staff, money)
What is quantitative research?
Numerical data
Begin with hypothesis and allows conclusions to be drawn with relationships between variables
What are some examples of qualitative research?
Questionnaires
RCTs
Cohort studies
Case control studies
What is meant by a questionnaire being valid and reliable?
- valid measures what it is supposed to
- reliable measures consistently
What is qualitative research?
Good to describe perspectives and explain relationships and make sense of phenomena in terms of meaning people bring to them
What are different types of qualitative research?
- observation and ethnography
- interviews
- focus groups
- documentary and media analysis
What is observational studies and ethnography?
Observations studies can be participant or non-participant
Ethnography is observing people in their natural habitat
✅ valuable insight ❌ labour-intensive
How should interviews be conducted?
Have an agenda of what to cover, but remain conversational in style and focus on the participants perspective
What are positives and negatives of focus groups?
✅ quick
❌ not good for sensitive topics, not good for individual experience and deviant views may be inhibited, hard to arrange, need a good facilitator, need a fairly homogenous group (so there’s no hierarchy)
What are examples of documentary data collected?
Using medical records and patient diaries
✅ can be historical, good for subjects difficult to investigate
❌ labour intensive
What does the social patterning of health describe?
That the more deprived a person is, the larger the proportion of their life will be spent in ill health, and the more likely they will die at a young age
What is the black report?
A landmark text by the department on health in 1980 that came up with different explanations for inequalities in health care
What explanations for inequalities in health care did the black report come up with?
- artefact explanation
- social selection explanation
- behavioural cultural explanation
- materialistic explanation
Which two other explanations are there for inequalities in healthcare, that aren’t from the black report?
- psychosocial explanation
- income distribution
Which is the most plausible explanation for inequalities in healthcare?
The materialistic explanation
What is the artefact explanation?
Idea that health inequalities is due to the way statistics are collected (ie measurements of class)
What is the social selection explanation?
The idea that ill health causes people to move to a lower social position, whereas healthy people move up the social hierarchy
What is the the behavioural cultural explanation?
The idea that ill health is due to people’s decisions, knowledge and goals
(Ie people from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to engage in more health-damaging behaviours and vice versa)
But… Too simplistic, not everyone has ‘choices’ when there’s a lack of resources, behaviour is due to social processes and not simply individual choice
What is the materialistic explanation?
Health inequalities are due to differential access to material resources
(Idea that low income allows less money to be spent on health, and that more deprived areas are prone to more hazards eg poor water)
What is the psychosocial explanation?
That health inequalities are due to psychosocial pathways acting in addition to the effects of material living standards
Eg stress impacts health in different ways, direct: physiologically, immune system, indirect: mental health, stress behaviours etc)
What is the income distribution explanation?
The idea that the degree of income inequality is the main determinant of health
(So it is not the richest, but the most egalitarian societies that have the best health)
What do utilisation studies measure?
The receipt of healthcare services, but it is still difficult to measure those who can’t access a service
What is the difference between inequality and inequity?
Inequality is when things are different. Inequity is inequalities that are unfair and unavoidable
What are lay beliefs?
How lay people understand and make sense of health and illness
What are the different perceptions of health?
Negative: health equates to absence of illness
Functional: health is ability to do certain things
Positive: health is a state of well being and fitness (so can be worked towards)
What is the sick role?
Formal response to symptoms, seeking formal help and acting as a patient
What is illness behaviour?
Activity of an ill persons to define their illness and seek help
How does social class affect perception of health?
Higher social class is more likely to have a positive definition of health so are incentivised to remain healthy
What is the illness iceberg?
Describes the fact that only a small property of symptoms are actually acted on, most symptoms never even get to a doctor
What is lay referral?
Most lay people discuss their symptoms with another lay persons, prior to, or instead of, seeking advice from a healthcare professional.
What is symptom evaluation?
Influences how quickly medical advice is sought
Eg how severe the pain is, it is normalised, how long symptoms persist (eg tipping point if remaining after X days), idea of candidacy (wont happen to me)
How can lay beliefs affect adherence?
- deniers and distancers: believe I don’t have x, or it’s not proper x therefore have poor adherence
- acceptors: accept diagnosis with no stigma and so have good adherence
- pragmatists: eg only use inhaler if symptoms are bad (will treat but not prevent)
What are determinants of health?
A range of factors that influence and individuals health eg media, relationships, culture.
What are the different health promotion prevention strategies?
Primary: aims to prevent the onset of disease eg smoking cessation
Secondary: aims to detect and treat disease at an early stage eg cancer screening, BP monitoring
Tertiary: aims to minimise effects of established disease eg by transplants, steroids
What are the principles of health promotion strategies?
- equitable
- sustainable (can persist once funding has ended)
- empowering (gives individuals power to change)
- holistic (encompasses their physical, mental, social and spiritual health)
- participatory (involve everyone at all stages)
- intersectoral (collaboration of all relevant sectors)
What are some problems with health promotion techniques?
- nanny state (too much interference)
- victim blaming (plays down influence from socioeconomic and environmental health determinants)
- fallacy of empowerment (giving people info doesn’t necessarily lead to power)
- unequal responsibility (as implementation of healthy behaviours is usually left to mothers)
- can reinforce negative stereotypes (eg HIV in gays)
- the prevention paradox
What does the prevention paradox describe?
The fact that interventions that make a difference at a population level might not have much effect on an individual
Eg national reduction in BP may appear successful at a population level, but there wouldn’t be much noticeable effect on those who weren’t a risky level just having it lowered more
What are some difficulties when evaluation the use of health promotion techniques?
- possible lag time to effect (delay to decay)
- design of intervention (eg was it leaflets or videos that had the effect)
- large chance of confiding factors
- large cost of evaluation research
What is an illness narrative?
A type of qualitative interviewing used to get a story telling narrative of someone’s experience with illness
What is he illness work in a chronic condition?
Having to cope with the diagnosis and symptoms, self management of condition
What is the everyday work of chronic illness?
Coping (cognitive) and strategies (actions) to deal with the illness
Can adapt to a new style of living, or normalise to attempt to retain their pre-illness lifestyle
What is the emotional work of chronic illness?
Protecting the emotional well being of others eg by maintaining cheery self
Idea of dependency impacting their role eg if there were breadwinner/ mother
What is the biographical work of chronic illness?
Loss of self and self value
Reconstruction of their biography
What is a stigma?
A negatively defined condition, attribute, trait or behaviour conferring ‘deviant’ status