Health and Society Flashcards
What are the 3 types of ethics?
- meta-ethics - study moral concepts
- normative - study of deciding what is the right action
- applied ethics - application of moral theories in real cases.
What are the 3 normative ethics?
Consequentialism - moral based on consequence of action e.g. act utilitarian
Deontology - morality of an action based on action’s adherence to the rules e.g. lying is wrong.
Virtue ethics - act according to the most virtuous person in the world.
What are the 4 principles approach?
- Autonomy - respect patient’s as individuals to make informed choices.
- Beneficence - do good, act in ways that positively benefit patients.
- Non-malaficience - do no harm.
- Justice - treat all patients and resources fairly and equitably.
Define medical professionalism.
Signifies the set of values, behaviours and relationships that underpins the trust the public has on doctors.
Why do doctors need to be good communicators?
Use clinical reasoning - must sort through cluster of features presented by patient and accurately assign a diagnostic label with development of appropriate treat so communication skills are key to getting info and explaining things to patients.
What are the consequences of good communication?
- accurate diagnosis
- accurate data gathering
- increased adherence to treatment
- effective doctor-patient relationship
- increased satisfaction
What are the consequences of poor communication?
- inaccurate diagnosis
- non-adherence
- less recognition of ICEF
- decreased satisfaction
- more complaints
Can communication skills be taught?
Yes, it leads to improvements but requires feedback and self-reflection.
What is the basic principle of the Calgary-Cambridge model?
Bridges the biomedical perspective with patient perspective.
PP - every patient explains own problems within their own framework, CC enables us to communicate within their own framework.
Why is biomedical explanations described as socially constructed?
Develops within social context, financed by particular interest (question of the time). Science is always a social exploration. Social factors: - funding - profit - ethical issues
Define eugenics.
Based on Darwin’s ideas, illogical conclusion that humans are evolving towards the ‘perfect’ or ‘ideal’ human race and we should socially construct a society to achieve this goal.
Where was eugenics prevalent?
Nazi Germany -> Jews
US -> race and immigration
UK -> class
Enacted through various laws e.g. sterilisation laws
Define positive and negative eugenics.
Positive - encouraging good genetics.
Negative - discouraging through bad discourse.
What is new genetics?
We are in genomic era - discover genetic factors to diseases, map human genome and have personalised genome.
What are the issues raised by new genetics?
Paradigm shift -> thinking about future health instead of present e.g. Angelina Jolie and BRCA gene -> desire for mastectomies and consults increased.
Designer babies
Dangerous behaviour -> people without predisposition feel ‘let off’ and won’t be careful with nutrition and smoking.
Risk surveillance -> health insurance, employment and civil liberties (genetic passport).
Define patient centred care.
Care that is responsive to needs of patient.
What is the rationale behind PCC?
Social relationship has changed in the last 30 years, in Victorian times - doctors pleased the patients. In 20th century, diagnostic capabilities increased so ritualistic act of diagnosis lead to paternalistic care. Eventually treating patients as individuals came into effect.
Define professional choice.
Doctor decides, patient consents.
Define shared-decision making.
Info shared, both decide together.
Define consumer choice.
Doctor informs, patient decides.
List the 5 criteria of PCC
- Explores the patients’ main reason for the visit concerns and need for information
- Seek an integrated understanding of the patients’ world – their whole person, emotional needs, and life issues.
- Finds common ground on what the problem is and mutually agrees on management
- Enhances prevention and health promotion
- Enhances the continuing relationship between the patient and the doctor
- Is realistic
Define sick role.
Illness is a form of social deviance, stops people from fulfilling their expectations in society.
What are the patients obligations in the sick role?
- want to get well quickly
- must seek professional medical advice
- allowed to shed some normal activities and responsibilities of society
- in need of care, can’t get well on their own.
What are the doctors obligations in the sick role?
- apply high skill and knowledge
- act for the welfare of patients and society, not for own self
- objective and emotionally detached
- guided by rules of professional practice
What are the rights of the doctor in the sick role?
- right to examine patients and enquire intimate physical and personal info.
- autonomy in professional practice
- position of authority
What are the criticisms of the sick role?
Ignores potential conflicts between patient and doctors value, best interest of individual and cost to society in allocation of resources.
Define uncertainty in medical practice.
Technical uncertainty - insufficient info to assist with accurate diagnosis.
Personal uncertainty - not sure what patient wants.
Conceptual uncertainty - difficult to apply available knowledge to specific patients.
What is the role of evidence in healthcare?
Reduces uncertainty in medical decisions.
Used to make informed decisions.
Increases efficiency and reduces variations.
What are the different types of decisions that doctors make?
- treatment options
- diagnosis
How has evidence based decision making arisen in medicine?
Evidence can inform decisions about effectiveness of treatments. There’s often gap between evidence generated and application into clinical practice.
- Variation in practice
- Increased pressure on resources
- increased consumer involvement
- lack of acceptance on expertise
Define evidence based decision making.
Conscientious, judicious and explicit use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.
What are the components of EBDM?
Evidence from research
Patient preference
Available resources
Clinical expertise
Describe the economic perspective in medicine.
Resources are scarce so economics is how people make choices about how to allocate the resources.
e. g. infertility:
- hippocratic -> infertile couples can benefit from IVF
- economic perspective -> £2 million funds 21,500 A&E attendees.
Define opportunity cost.
Value of what you give up when you make a treatment decision. Measured in terms of resources given up or the foregone health for another patient.
Why has demand for healthcare increased?
- ageing population
- technological change
- increased population size
How is the NHS funded?
- general taxation
- national insurance
- payments made to NHS e.g. prescriptions
Who manages NHS?
Department of Health
Who are the purchasers within NHS?
CCGs
What is the conventional medical model of disease?
Looks at biomedical perspective only (no social, psychological and behavioural factors).
Biomedical explanation for disease - deviations from the norm. Over-simplifies problems of illness. Enables paternalistic medicine.
What is disease?
What is wrong with the body, as identified by signs and symptoms and abnormal tests.
What is illness?
Feelings about being ill (feelings, ideas, function, expectations).
What are the problems that arise from failure to recognise the duality of agendas (disease & illness)?
- Patient dis-satisfaction
- Complaints
How is disease and illness interrelated?
To be patient-centred, must weave between disease and illness to find common ground and mutual understanding with patient.
How might the patient’s agenda be explored in consultation?
The Calgary-Cambridge model seeks both disease info by history and examination and illness info by ICEF.
Define the principle of respecting patient autonomy.
- acting with sufficient understanding
- acting free from the control of others
- acting in accordance with one’s values.
Why is autonomy important?
Consequentialist - leads to better outcomes.
Deontology - Kant -> treating people as ends not means.
Resting autonomy is a negative and positive obligation e.g. obtaining patient’s consent and respecting their confidentiality.
Describe the meaning of the patient’s best interest.
Doctor does something they believe will provide a net benefit for the patient.
How is best interests related to the 4 principles approach?
Best interest is a synthesis of principles of non-malaficience and beneficence to give an all things considered approach by the doctor and the patient.
i.e. balancing side effects with the benefit of a particular treatment.
What are the potential difficulties of assessing best interest?
- difficulties in predicting future outcome
- patient unable to communicate info
- conflict between benefits of treatment and patients one values.
- conflict between doctor’s views and patient’s view on best interest.
- emotional attachment
How does autonomy relate to the patient’s best interest?
Patients often in best position to autonomously decide what is in their best interest so for the doctor, acting in the patient’s best interest will require empowering patients to make decisions for themselves.
What happens when autonomy and patient’s best interest is not considered?
Paternalism:
Coercion - forcing pt. to eat
Misinformation - lying to save from distress
Do patients have the right to accept/refuse options?
Yes even if it seems irrational or for no reason at all.
Define epidemiology.
Study of distribution and determinants of health-related states and events in population and the application of this study to the control of health problems.
Define incidence.
Number of new cases in a period/number initially free of disease
Number changes due to new diagnosis and immigration of ill people.
Rate
Define prevalence.
Number of people with disease at a particular point in time/ total population
Number changes due to recovery, death, emigration of ill people.
Describe patterns of smoking across time.
Smoking prevalence has decreased over time in males and females. Ethnicity: - highest male -> Bangladesh - lowest male -> Indian - highest female -> Irish - lowest female -> Bangladesh More prevalent in deprived areas.
Describe smoking prevalence between girls vs. boys.
Ages 11-15, higher girls prevalence
Above 18, higher male prevalence
Decreasing prevalence after age 25.
What is descriptive epidemiology?
Tells us how things are distributed.
How does descriptive epidemiology help in medicine?
Knowledge of distribution of smoking in the population guides prevention action, identifies cause of disease and surveillance of populations.
e.g. Need to help people stop smoking before age 40 as health risks will reduce to that of non-smokers then.
What is symptom iceberg?
Most symptoms are managed in the community without people seeking professional healthcare.
Tip of the iceberg - small amount of people present to healthcare.
Submerged majority - self-care.
What are Zola’s triggers for help-seeking.
- Interference with work or physical activity.
- Interference with social relations
- Interpersonal crisis
- Putting time limit on symptoms
- Sanctioning by friends and relatives.
What are the barriers to people seeking help?
- Provision and availability of health services.
- Attitudes of staff (receptionists, doctors)
- Social/cultural distance
- Geographical distance
- Time, effort, childcare, loss of earnings
- Car ownership and transport costs
- Bad experiences and waiting times.
What factors influence people’s decision to seek help?
- Perception and evaluation of symptoms.
- Perceived risk of disease
- Previous experience
- Psychological factors - fear of death
- Concern about using NHS resources
- Context e.g. weekend, Christmas
What is the old-world model of doctor-patient relationship?
Patients don’t have easy access to knowledge base of doctors.
Doctor is smartest.
What is the new world model of doctor-patient relationship?
Patients have as much access to the evidence base of medicine as doctors.
Patients are smarter.
What is medical pluralism?
Co-existence with a society of differentially designed and conceived medical traditions and systems (herbalism, acupuncture, homeopathy).
What is the lay-referral system?
Before attending appointments, 70% consult at least 3 lay people e.g. relatives and friends, pharmacists, internet.
Define illness behaviour.
Ways in which symptoms may be differentially perceived, evaluated and acted up by different kinds of people.
How does illness behaviour vary?
With age, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and disability.
How does illness behaviour vary with gender?
Men find cold symptoms more difficult to handle than women.
How does illness behaviour vary with ethnicity?
BAME more likely to delay help seeking.
How does illness behaviour vary with socio-economic conditions?
Working class -> symptoms part of everyday life e.g. cough and back pains.
Middle class -> seek help quicker than working class.
Why are symptoms differentially perceived by different people?
Depends on our life experiences.
Socially and culturally learnt response -> multi-faceted.
What is evidence?
Evidence is an observation, factor or organised body of information, offered to support or justify inferences or beliefs in the demonstration of some proposition or matter at issue.
What is the biomedical model of health and illness?
Questions of health and illness largely solved by investigation genetics, cellular function and the impact of pharm interventions.
What is the social model of health and illness?
Accepts health and illness can’t be entirely explained by genes, biochemistry and physiology.
The context in which people live is important.
The opportunities for a healthy life are not afforded equally to all -> health inequalities.
What are social determinants?
Conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age.
These include economic policies, development agendas, social norms, political systems.
How are social classes classified?
- Professional - doctor
- Managerial
- Skilled - secretary
- Partly-skilled - porter
- Unskilled - cleaner
Define social inequalities.
Differences in people’s health linked to social inequalities in their lives.
Health inequalities persist despite overall improvement in health.
What are the Black Report’s explanations of health inequalities?
- Statistical artefact (illusionary)
- People’s health drives their social class
- Ill health is caused by people’s behaviour.
- Determined by people’s position in social structure.
Describe the life course approach of explaining health inequalities.
Position in society from birth and throughout life -> material conditions and behavioural risk factors leads to health inequalities.
What other reports followed the Black Report?
Acheson report, 1998
Marmot review, 2010
How are health inequalities measured?
- Household income
- Educational level
- Occupational status
- Housing tenure
- Area deprivation
What are the determinants of health outcomes?
Biological (ageing, genetics)
Social and economic (education, housing, employment)
Environment (air quality, water, climate change)
Lifestyle issues (diet, smoking, drugs)
Health services (delivery and access)
Define health promotion.
Process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health.
Moves beyond focus on individual behaviour towards a wide range of social and environmental interventions.
What are the WHO’s 5 aspects of health promotion?
- Health public policy -> education, income, housing.
- Supportive environment -> smoke free zones.
- Community action
- Personal skills
- Reorienting health services.
Define health education.
Any combo of learning experiences designed to facilitate voluntary actions conducive to health.
What is the aim of health education?
To give people knowledge and skills to change potentially health damaging behaviours i.e. mass media campaigns.
Define health protection.
Legislations to protect public health i.e. seatbelts, pollution, tracing diseases.
What is primary prevention?
Preventing onset of disease.
e.g. immunisations, healthy school meals, screening risk factors.
What is secondary prevention?
Detecting and curing disease at an early stage.
e.g. screening for disease.
What is tertiary prevention?
Minimising effects or reduce progression of irreversible disease.
e.g. hip replacements, palliative care, dentistry.
What are Beattie’s typologies of health promotion?
- Health persuasion - experts inform individuals about what to do e.g. mass campaigns, smear tests. Cheap but not cost-effective.
- Legislative action - upon experts advice, governments intervene e.g. smoking ban, fluoride in water. Limits autonomy and freedom.
- Personal counselling - opportunistic prevention in consultations e.g. youth or community workers.
- Community development - locally based initiatives e.g. food cooperatives.
What should doctors be aware of when giving opportunistic advice?
Awareness of patient’s receptiveness.
Respectful - listening to patient’s views
Avoid preaching
Caring not scaring
Outline the arguments for and against smokers receiving coronary bypass surgery.
For:
- doctors have ethical obligation to treat on basis of clinical need and best available treatments
- slippery slope
- poor people smoke more than rich
- value judgements - deserving and undeserving
Against:
- smoking led to disease in first place
- smoking limits effectiveness of surgery
- poor outcome -> higher failure rate
- expensive when resources limited.
Define preventative paradox.
Large no. of people must participate in a preventative strategy for direct benefit to relatively few.
What are the two systems of health knowledge?
- scientific medicine
2. lay medicine
What are common GI symptoms?
- difficulty swallowing
- nausea
- vomiting
- constipation
- tummy ache
- stomach ache
- diarrhoea
- changes in bowel movements
Why do doctors need to use lay talk?
Doctors have to deal with both systems to make their specialist knowledge understandable to their patients.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of lay-referral and self-care?
+ reduces pressure on GPs & NHS
+ reduces costs
- delays diagnosis
- delays treatment
Why is CAMs used?
- focuses on health, wellness and wellbeing
- emphasises subjective experience of the whole person
- less hierarchical than medicine
- natural, safer, non-invasive
- less costly
What are the positive and negative reasons why patients use CAMs?
\+ perceived effectiveness and safety \+ control over treatment \+ non-invasive \+ good experience \+ accessible - dissatisfaction with conventional healthcare - waiting lists - poor doctor-patient relationship - rejection of conventional science - desperation
What are the consequences of poor doctor-patient relationship?
- inaccurate diagnosis
- less recognition of ICEF
- non-adherence
- decreased satisfaction
- more complaints
Define medicalisation.
Process of defining an increasing number of life’s problems as medical problems.
e.g. sexuality
Define pharmaceuticalisation.
Transformation of human condition/capabilities into opportunities for pharmaceutical intervention.
Why does gender matter in health care?
Women more likely to report health problems than men:
women - soft
men - hard
Define diagnosis.
Process of determining the nature of a disorder by considering the patient’s signs and symptoms, medical background and results of tests.
Define prognosis.
Assessment of the future course and outcome of a patient’s disease based on knowledge of the course of disease from other patients + patient’s general health, age and sex.
Define treatment.
Choice of what action to take to treat patient.
What are the 3 theories of decision making?
Normative - what should you be doing?
Descriptive - what are you doing?
Prescriptive - how can we improve what you are doing?
Why is hypothetic-deductive model more common in the less experienced?
Used for diagnostic problems that are less familiar.
Experienced doctors more likely to use pattern matching and deliberative reasoning.
Describe hypothetic-deductive model of decision making.
Cue acquisition -> hypothesis formation -> cue interpretation -> hypothesis evaluation.
What are the 2 phases in the choice process?
- framing and editing - preliminary analysis of decision problem.
- phase of evaluation - framed prospects evaluated and prospect with highest value selected.
Describe how framing a problem differently changes the patients choice.
If treatment is framed according to relative risk reduction, more will agree. If framed to absolute risk reduction, more will say no.
Define evidence.
Any factor that can and should influence clinical decision making.
Result of rigorous clinical trials and observational studies.
List the hierarchy of evidence.
- Systematic reviews and meta-analysis
- RCTs
- Cohort study (controlled observational study)
- Case control studies (controlled observational study)
- Case series
- Case report (uncontrolled observational study)
- Ideas and opinions
- Animal research
- In vitro research
What is the quality of evidence based on?
Quality is associated with level of potential bias in a study.
What does a higher position on the pyramid say about the research?
- better quality
- less potential for research bias
- more predictive power
What are the negatives of the hierarchy of evidence?
- study designs are suited to different questions
- good and bad studies of any type
- pyramid doesn’t include qualitative research.
What are the 5S levels of organisation of evidence?
Studies -> synthesis (systematic review) -> synopses (journal abstract) -> summaries (textbooks) -> systems (computerised database).
How is evidence used to inform diagnosis decision-making?
- identify most likely hypothesis
- evaluate likelihood of hypothesis of being correct
- accuracy of diagnostic tests
How is evidence used to inform prognosis decision-making?
Evaluate what happened to other patients with same condition.
How is evidence used to inform treatment decision-making?
- evaluate likelihood of different options having an effect
- evaluate likelihood of adverse events
- likely acceptability of treatment by patients
Define consent.
Properly informed and freely given decision of a competent patient.
List the forms of consent.
- oral
- written
- expressed (a way which is clearly articulated)
- implied (holding out arm for BP check)
When is consent required?
Required before examination, treatment, care, disclosure of confidential info, screening, teaching and research.
Why is consent needed?
- To maintain trust
- Failure -> harm
- Respects patients autonomy and right to self-determination
- Professional requirement
- Legal requirement
- Failure -> serious professional and personal repercussions.
Define battery.
When a person touches another person without his/her consent.
Define negligence.
Causal connection between failure to inform adequately and the resultant harm.
Differentiate between reasonable doctor standard and reasonable patient standard.
Doctor - practitioners are not negligent if they act in accordance with the practice accepted by a responsible body of medical opinion.
Patient - if there is significant risk which would affect the patients decision about a treatment then its the doctor’s responsibility to inform the patient and allow them to decide.
Define informed consent.
Patients making an informed choice.
How should info given to patients be tailored for consent?
Tailored to:
- needs, wishes and priorities
- level of knowledge and understanding
- nature of their condition
- complexity of treatment
- nature and level of risk associated with the treatment.
What sort of info should be given to patients?
- diagnosis and prognosis
- uncertainties and options for further investigations
- options
- purpose
- benefits, risks, likelihood of success
- people responsible
- right to seek 2nd opinion.
Define voluntary consent.
Patient must be acting according to their own free will and not under pressure from other parties.
Define capacity.
Legal term, describes patients with legally recognised decision-making authority.
Define competency.
Patients cognitive faculties are such that they are able to make a decision with respect to given situation.
Describe the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Test of capacity:
- understand
- retain
- weigh up
- communicate