Health and Disease in Society Flashcards
What features do we use to define healthcare quality?
Safe Effective Patient-centered Timely Efficient Equitable
What is an adverse event?
Injury caused by medical management that prolongs the hospitalization of a patient and/or produces a disability.
What is a preventable event?
An adverse event that could be prevented given the current state of medical knowledge.
What are human factors?
Human factors involve psychological responses that are predictable and poor reliability of systems that can contribute to a problem- made up of active failures and latent conditions.
What is the difference between an active failure and a latent condition?
An active failure is an act that leads directly to the harm of a patient whereas a latent condition is a predisposing condition that increases the likelihood of an active failure occurring.
What is meant by the ‘Swiss cheese model’?
Successive layers of defenses, barriers and safeguards with holes due to active failures and latent conditions. When these holes align this can lead to adverse or preventable events.
How can we remove latent conditions and avoid adverse events?
Avoid reliance on memory and decrease reliance on vigilance
Make things visible
Review and simplify processes
Standardize common procedures and processes
Routinely use checklists
What is meant by clinical governance?
A framework through which NHS organisations are accountable for continuous improvement of services and safeguarding high standards of care.
What quality improvement mechanisms exist in the NHS?
Standard setting e.g. NICE
Commissioning
Financial incentives
Disclosure
Regulation- registration and inspection by GMC
Data gathering and feedback
Clinical audits- both at national and local levels
What is the role of NICE?
NICE sets quality standards based on the best available evidence, produced collaboratively with the NHS and service users.
What is the role of a clinical commissioning group?
CCGs are responsible for commissioning services for their local populations and driving quality by acting in the best interests of the consumer.
What is a QOF in primary care?
QOF- quality outcomes framework.
Sets national quality standards with indicators so that practices can score ‘points’ and payments can be calculated.
What is the National Tariff?
The national tariff is set by the Department of Health and provides a consistent basis/payment for commissioning particular services in order to incentivise efficiency and drive quality.
What is the role of the Care Quality Commission?
The CQC can impose “conditions of registration”, make visits, issue warnings and fines and in extreme cases prosecute NHS trusts.
What are the phases of a clinical audit?
Choose topic Criteria and standards set First evaluation e.g. questionnaire Implement change as a result of analysis Second evaluation to observe result of the change
What is meant by quality improvement?
Systematic changes that will lead to better patient experiences and outcomes, system performance and professional development.
PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT
What is meant by evidence-based practice?
The integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.
Why do we use systematic reviews?
To highlight gaps in research or poor quality research
Offers quality control
Easily converted into guidelines
What practical criticisms are there of evidence-based practice?
Difficult to create and maintain systematic reviews across all specialties
Challenging and difficult to disseminate findings
RCTs are not always feasible or desirable
Requires good faith on the part of pharmaceutical companies
What philosophical criticisms are there of evidence-based practice?
Does not align with most doctor’s methods of reasoning
Aggregate population-level outcomes don’t mean that a particular intervention will work for an individual
Creates ‘unreflective rule followers’
Acts as a means of legitimizing rationing
May compromise professional responsibility/autonomy
What problems are associated with getting evidence into practice?
Doctors may not know about the evidence
Organisational systems do not support innovation
Commissioning decisions reflect different priorities
Resources may not be available to implement the change
What is meant by qualitative research methods?
Aim to make sense of phenomena in terms of the meanings that people bring to them and offers insights into people’s behavior.
What is meant by quantitative research methods?
Collections of numerical data that begin with an idea/hypothesis and by deduction allows the establishment of associations/relationships.
What are the advantages of quantitative methods?
Quick and cheap
They are good at establishing relationships
Allow comparisons
Describe and measure
What are the disadvantages of quantitative methods?
May force people into inappropriate categories
Do not allow personal expression
Not effective in establishing causality
What is ethnography?
Studying human behavior in its natural context, e.g. participant observation to allow knowledge of behaviors that people are unaware of.
What are focus groups?
Flexible method for assessing a group-based collective understanding of a topic or issue. Membership is ideally homogeneous and a good facilitator is required.
What are the advantages of qualitative methods?
Help to understand perspectives
Explain relationships
What are the disadvantages of qualitative methods?
Cannot establish relationships
They are not generalisable
Are highly labor-intensive
What is the social selection explanation for health inequalities?
Direction of causation is from health to social position, therefore the chronically ill and disabled are more likely to be disadvantaged.
What is the behavioral-cultural explanation for health inequalities?
Ill health is due to people’s choices and decisions, knowledge and goals e.g. people from more disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to engage in more health-damaging behaviors.
However “choices” and behaviors are often outcomes of social processes and may be difficult to exercise in adverse conditions.
What is the psycho-social explanation for health inequalities?
Psycho-social factors act in addition to the direct effects of absolute material living standards and stresses are distributed on a social gradient e.g. negative life events, social support, autonomy.
What is the income distribution explanation for health inequalities?
Relative (not average) income affects health, therefore countries with greater income inequalities have greater health inequalities.
Re-distributive policies reduce income inequality in a society in order to improve social well being.
What is the difference between inequality and inequity?
Inequality is when services are not equal and inequity refers to inequalities that are unfair and avoidable.
What other factors besides socio-economic status can affect access to health services?
Ethnicity
Gender
Health exposures
What are lay beliefs?
How people understand and make sense of health and illness with no specialized knowledge, so evidence is drawn from embedded beliefs and social sources.
What is the negative definition of health?
Defined as the absence of illness/symptoms.
What is the functional definition of health?
Ability to do certain things/activities and continue with daily life activities.
What is the positive definition of health?
Health is a state of wellbeing and fitness- proactive approach.
What is meant by health behavior?
A health behavior is an activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health.
What is illness behavior?
The activities undertaken by an ill person to define their illness and seek solution.
What is sick role behavior?
The formal response to symptoms including seeking formal help etc.
What is meant by the lay referral system?
Chain of advice seeking contacts which the sick individual makes with other lay people prior to seeking help. This may encourage or discourage the individual to seek professional help.
What are the three lay approaches to symptom evaluation?
Deniers- claim symptoms do not interfere with daily activity
Acceptors- control illness with medication and adhere to treatment
Pragmatists- use medication when they feel it necessary but may downplay illness severity
What is meant by health promotion?
The process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health. Health promotion combines health education and public policy.
What features are seen in good health promotion?
Empowerment
Participatory
Holistic
Intersectoral (collaboration of agencies)
Sustainable- aims to bring about maintainable change
Multi-strategy
What is Public Health England?
A group that brings together agencies with the aim to empower communities, enable professional freedoms and unleash new evidence-based ideas.
What are the structural critiques of health promotion?
Focus too much on individual responsibility/victim blaming
Ignores the factors that material conditions play in ill health
What are the surveillance critiques of health promotion?
Health promotion results in monitoring and regulating the population
What are the consumption critiques of health promotion?
Lifestyle choices are not only seen as ‘health risks’ but play a part in identity
What is primary prevention?
Prevention of the onset of disease by reducing exposure to risk factors e.g. immunisation
What is secondary prevention?
Treating disease at an early stage e.g. screening
What is tertiary prevention?
Minimizing the effects of established diseases e.g. maximizing the remaining capabilities of a disabled person
What is the ‘fallacy of empowerment’?
Unhealthy lifestyles are not a product of ignorance and may be outside of the patient’s control.
What is the ‘prevention paradox’?
Interventions that make a difference at a population level may have little effect on an individual.
What is process evaluation?
Assesses the process of programme implementation by qualitative methods.
What is impact evaluation?
Assesses the immediate effect of an intervention.
What is outcome evaluation?
Assesses the long-term consequences and measures what is achieved by the programme.
What is meant by delay and decay in terms of health promotion programmes?
Delay- some interventions have a long time to take an effect.
Decay- some interventions wear off rapidly and the changes made are not sustainable.
What are some problems with evaluation of health promotion programmes?
Design problems
Lag time to effect
Confounding factors
High cost
What is meant by ‘negotiated reality’ in terms of chronic illness?
The experiences and meaning of chronic illness that vary from person to person, how people manage and negotiate chronic illness in every day life.
What is an ‘illness narrative’?
Illness narratives refer to the story-telling and accounting practices that occur in the face of illness.
What are the features of illness work?
Getting a diagnosis
Managing symptoms (must be done before coping with social relationships)
Self-management (optimum is difficult to achieve)
What is the Expert Patient Programme?
A programme that aims to help patients better self-manage their condition and learn coping mechanisms to help them improve their general well being and adherence to treatments.