Health: A Social Phenomenon

Those newly defined illnesses changed people’s perceptions and expectations of health and old age, thus dramatically altering society’s expectations of medicine and subsequent life quality. Conrad’s ethnography is a good example of the ethnomedical approach to medical anthropology that addressed several health conditions that are prominent in the United States. He culminated his book by arguing medicalization primarily serves as a form of social control, solving problems with individuals and not society. While the book clearly explained a wide range of negative causes and effects of medicalization, Conrad only acknowledged a few examples of successful resistance briefly in his last chapter. In order to empower its readers beyond education, the book should have examined these instances of anti-medicalization to find similarities and derive productive countermeasures for individuals to follow.

From birth to death—science and bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macklin R. (2003). Applying the Four Principles, Journal of Medical Ethics; 29: p.275-280 doi:10.1136/jme.29.5.275.retrieved from http:// jme.bmj.com/content/29/5/275.full Munyaradzi Mawere, (2012), Critical reflections on the principle of beneficence in biomedicine. The Pan African Medical Journal, 11(29).

This could involve also some sort of guidelines or norms which have been passed on generations. Looking at these three concepts may seem to be straightforward; however, todays healthcare profession seems to be struggling to take on these concepts in order provide “cultural competent care for their patients” (Kelly and Nazroo 2008, p. 159) First of all, there are many issues which influence the ethnic inequalities in health whi... ... middle of paper ... ... [Accessed 6 January 2012] 8. Hilton. C (1996) Collection ethnic group data for inpatients: is it useful? British Medical Journal (clinical research ed.)

This paper will discuss the strategies and the application framework of knowledge management in healthcare units with special emphasis on hospitals. Discussion In healthcare enterprises, knowledge management has both challenging as well as intriguing issues. Such issues come from the distributed and heterogeneous healthcare domain. Also, the security and ethical concerns further make it difficult to access information. Another distinguishing feature of knowledge management in healthcare uses is that th... ... middle of paper ... ... of Knowledge Management, 10(2), 110 – 120.

At the heart of the issue is the conflict between a patient’s right to choose between life and death and, as expressed by one social scientist, “society’s obligation to protect its most vulnerable members from hastened and not completely voluntary death” (Ardelt 424). The healthcare field acknowledges the role of medical technology, which has extended the lifetime of many patients through life support therapies like feeding tubes and dialysis, in creating a lower quality of life characterized by an agonizingly prolonged and costly dying (Martin 54). This phenomenon has made physician-assisted suicide a highly relevant and compelling issue today. But, while some defend physician-assisted suicide as a form of medical autonomy for the terminally ill, others contend that such voluntary euthanasia is too extreme a solution for most situations and improvement in patient and palliative care is a more acceptable option and would help maintain the patient-doctor relationship. The purpose of this literature review is to present these scholarly perspectives in an attempt to provide a relatively expansive overview of the attitudes relating to physician-assisted suicide in the medical community, with an eye to how they compare with public opinion.

Research in multidisciplinary public health can be challenging. There can be serious tension generated among the participants in the research process concerning which approaches are best suitable for the research. Also, the choice of methods to be considered from a compendium of methods that best suits a study could be a herculean task to overcome owing to the differences in the interests and views of the various disciplines involved in public health research (Saks, 2013). This could result in a pyramid of research approaches where an approach is seen by professionals as more scientific and more relevant to public health than others. Research approaches have been observed in the past to have a vertical relationship with each other.

16) Furrow, Barry, et al. Health Law: Cases, Materials and Problems. St. Paul: West Group, 1997, p.894. 17) Bower, Hilary. “Public Consultation on Human Cloning Launched.” British Medical Journal.

To begin with, society and social factors have increasingly been investigated as they have been thought of as crucial components to understand health. This tendency was derived by the inefficiency of the traditional model of health, the biomedical model, in many situations to manage some diseases such as communicable diseases (Browne, Health and Illness, 2005). Disease was predominantly attributed to proximal biological factors identified by doctors according to the classical model accepted in the nineteenth century. Therefore, this model seems to be inadequate to explain the differences in health outcomes between social strata. Despite the fact that health currently could be defined differently depending upon factors such as sex and age, it is generally believed now that it combines physical, mental and social well being of individuals (Blaxter, 2001).

This provision is often not adhered to. There is adequate research evidenced from a number of medical studies to suggest that doctors’ professional values are normally influenced by external factors. This fact supports several growing literatures supporting a change in the external medical environment to reduce instances of medical errors. BMJ Publishing Group Ltd affirms that “We believe that as well as promoting high standards of behavior from within their own professional societies, it is important for doctors to advocate for healthcare system reforms that facilitate high standards of behavior” (BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 2011, 19). However, the call to reform the healthcare sector is deemed to be an internal affair as many doctors across the globe are pressured to improve existing healthcare systems to reduce chances of medical errors.

Healthcare has been a topic of discussion with the majority of the country. Issues with insurance coverage, rising costs, limited options to gain coverage, and the quality of healthcare have become concerns for law makers, healthcare providers and the general public. Some of those concerns were alleviated with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, but new concerns have developed with problems that have occurred in the implementation of the new law. The main concerns of the country are if the Affordable Care Act will be able to overcome the issues that plagued the old healthcare system, the cost of the program, and how will the new law affect the quality of the health delivery system. In 2010, President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act in order to bring reform to the current healthcare system.