Public health Flashcards
What are the 4As?
Access
Availiability
Affordability
Awareness
What is deviance?
An action that violates a cultural norm
May be necessary to change health behaviour
What is the WHO health definition 1948
A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
What is the WHO health definition 1984
The extent to which an individual or group is able to realise aspirations and satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living; it is a positive concept emphasising social and personal resources as well as physical capabilities.
What is public health?
The science and art of promoting and protecting health and wellbeing, preventing ill-health and prolonging life through the organised efforts of society.
Describe the Nuffield Ladder of intervention
At bottom do nothing, then guiding by incentives, then disincentives, then eliminating choice
What are the 3 types of prevention?
Primary prevention: Preventing the onset of disease
Secondary prevention: Preventing the progression of disease from a pre-clinical stage
Tertiary prevention: Preventing morbidity and mortality through treatment of clinical disease
Name 6 things that determine health outcomes
Income
Environment
Occupation
Culture
Societal Status
Access to Education
What are the 3 domains of public health?
Health Improvement:
This is about dealing with those six things that determine health outcomes.
Health Protection:
This relates to infectious diseases, radiation, chemicals/poisons, emergency response and environmental health.
Health services improvement:
This is about ensuring the NHS is fit for purpose and the money is being spent in the right place. Could include monitoring clinical effectiveness and efficiency, service planning, audits and evaluations and clinical governance.
What is ethics?
The philosophical study of right and wrong actions or ways of living
What are the 3 levels of ethics?
- Meta ethics - explores fundamental questions (such as is there a right and wrong?)
- Ethical theory - philosophical attempts to create ethical theory. e.g., utilitarianism
- Applied ethics - ethical investigation in specific areas.
Name 3 different forms of ethical reasoning
Top down - Deductive - take one ethical theory and apply it consistently to each issue.
Bottom up - Inductive - Use past settled medical cases to generate a theory/guide to practice.
Consider the theory that best fits own considered beliefs and then apply it.
What is evidence based medicine?
The conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.
The practice of EBM means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.
Describe 5 key elements of EBM
Find the evidence.
Assess the evidence.
Synthesise the evidence (e.g., combine results of different studies narratively or perform meta-analysis)
Make a good decision (is the evidence good enough and does it apply to this patient)
Evaluating performance against the evidence (is the evidence I used before still relevant?)
What is PICO?
Patient or Population
Intervention
Control
Outcome
Used to make a good question or determine relevance of research
What is medical professionalism?
A set of values, behaviours and relationships that underpins the trust the public has in its doctors.
What is patient safety?
Coordinated efforts to prevent harm, caused by the process of healthcare itself, from occurring to patients.
Name 4 key ethical theories
Consequentialism - e.g. Utilitarianism
Deontology
Virtue
The 4 principles
What is normative ethics?
Focusses on acts - e.g. the person doing it, the act itself or the consequences of the act
3 types - virtue, deontology, consequentialism
What is consequentialism?
Morality judged solely by consequences
What is utilitarianism?
Most happiness for largest number of people
Type of consequentialism
Describe 3 problems with consequentialism.
Can we treat minorities unfairly to promote the happiness of a majority?
Should we carry out ethically questionable research to maximise the welfare of society?
How do we quantify good/better?
What is the doctrine of double effect?
If doing something morally good has a morally bad side effect it’s ethically ok to do so provided the bad side effect wasn’t intended, even if you knew the bad side effect would probably happen.
e.g. giving morphine reduces life expectancy but reduces agony
What is deontology?
Whether an act is right or wrong is determined by its inherent nature, based on a set of principles, regardless of its consequences
Describe two types of imperatives
Hypothetical imperatives: e.g. eat well to stay healthy (dependent on outcome, not certain)
Categorical imperatives: e.g. Do not lie (not dependent on the end.)
Describe 3 challenges of deontology
The key concern is with duties and rights (what makes something right?)
Doesn’t matter what the consequences are
Duties can conflict
What is virtue ethics?
The focus is on the character of the agent (person performing the action) - action only right of that of a virtuous person
Describe 3 problems with virtue ethics
Can be culture specific
‘Virtue’ is too broad and non-specific to be practically applied
Emphasis on individuals ignores social dimensions
What are the four principles of medical ethics?
Autonomy
Beneficence
Non-maleficence
Justice
What is a stereotype threat?
When a patient senses that they are being seen in terms of a stereotype, a stress response might occur. This can make it difficult to communicate or receive information.
What are the two modes of thinking?
Type 1 - fast, instinctive, emotional, prone to error.
Type 2 - slower, deliberate, analytical, used for complex decisions and more reliable.
What are two models of health and disease?
Biomedical model
Social model
Name 3 theories of health
- Health as an ideal state (unattainable)
- Health as a personal strength or ability (too vague)
- Health as a state of functioning to perform social tasks (narrow as assumes health opposite to disease)
Illness vs disease
Illness: the social, lived experience of symptoms and suffering.
Disease: a technical malfunction or deviation which is diagnosed.
What is the 90:10 paradox?
Most health activity occurs outside hospitals but health resources concentrated there
What is the inverse care law?
Those who need healthcare most are least likely to receive it
What is the sick role?
Term used to describe the rights and obligations of a person that is sick
Postulates:
- The person is not responsible for assuming the sick role.
- The sick person is exempted from carrying out some or all of normal social duties (e.g. work, family).
- The sick person must try and get well – the sick role is only a temporary phase.
- In order to get well, the sick person needs to seek and submit to appropriate medical care.
What is medicalisation?
The process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems often requiring medical treatment
Labels and treats deviant and non-conformist behaviour
What is iatrogenesis?
The side effects and risks associated with the medical intervention
What must be the case for consent to be valid?
Patient must be competent
Patient must have sufficient information
Consent must be freely given
What are 3 types of consent?
Implied, verbal, written