social backgrounds are reluctant to attend health consultancies, this may be due to
financial reasons and they may not be able to afford the health care. As the working
and under class tend to have less autonomy in their jobs, they may not want to miss
out on work hours and attend a health check up. This again, may lead to minor
problems becoming more serious. Therefore, the upper and middle class tend to have
advantages in terms of health care.
Healthcare has since been labelled as feminine, on the whole, and it seems that
women tend attend medical help more so than men. As many men are reluctant to
make appointments, often women go for them. This may cause further problems as
they may not know the symptoms as well as the real patient and can lead to a
misdiagnosis. Women attend health consultancies double the amount men do,
annually. One of the problems in connection to this, is the idea that some of these
problems may be trivial ones. The self-fulfilling prophecy may play a part in this,
whereby some patients may believe that they have a condition but in actual fact, they
don’t. This can cause problems within consultancies, as the patient may not receive
the care that they want. They may be wasting the consultant’s time without realising
and cause delay in the treatment of other patients who have genuine problems. These
are just some of the problems that may arise from the patient, whilst, on the other
hand, many problems are due to the consultants.
Many people forget that consultants, just as the rest of society are also human and
can make mistakes. A major problem is bias and labelling. This is a process, which
takes place in every day life and is essential during one to one interactions, such as health
care consultancies. Diagnosis is solely based upon the analysis of patients by the
consultants and this infers stereotyping and judgement may come into play. However
this does not mean judgement on the symptoms only but also judgement of
appearance for example the clothes the patient is wearing and even gender and socio-
economic background. An example of this may be whereby both a male and female
patient may explain the same symptoms such as stress. The male may be diagnosed
with overworking and be issued a sick not whilst a female might be prescribed with
medication it terms of depression. In this case it is not the symptoms, which define the
treatment rather the labelling process that has occurred. The workload that consultants
face also plays a part, over working and stress means that the consultant may
misdiagnose due to fatigue and therefore cause further problems. It also means that t
consultancies may be rushed as the pressure to complete all the work starts to
increase. Thus it can cause a lack of incentive to work, which creates space for
mistakes and unsatisfied patients. Consultants can also be bias and therefore can treat
patients differently. In an extreme case, the consultant may prefer to work with
children rather than the elderly and may therefore spend more time and effort on the
children.
Another problem is the idea of Iatrogenesis, whereby the medical profession rather
than cure causes harm. The misdiagnosis of symptoms can cause much harm. There is
much disagreement as to what constitutes iatrogenic illness. For decades, peptic ulcers
were said to be caused by an emotional disorder, which prevented afflicted people
from managing "stress." Physicians instructed many people with ulcers to change
their lifestyles and, in some cases, to take anti-anxiety medications. In recent years
researchers determined that bacteria treatable with antibiotics caused most peptic
ulcers. Were the adverse emotional and treatment consequences of misdiagnosing
ulcers as a psychiatric illness iatrogenic? Similarly, for many years epilepsy was said
by medical experts to be evidence of pathological criminality. Epileptics were
imprisoned in "colonies," to isolate them from the general population. Were the
obviously damaging effects of this "treatment" iatrogenic? Are the present large-scale
drugging of children (mostly boys) diagnosed with "Attention Deficit Hyperactive
Disorder," and the former "treatment" of homosexuals with electroconvulsive therapy
(shock treatment), insulin coma, and lobotomy examples of iatrogenic disease? Most
physicians would say they are not, yet the harm resulting from these erroneous
diagnoses and severe "treatments" are no less damaging for the people who suffered
them. This causes major problems and can prevent the health service from running
smoothly.
From a psychological view, one of the major problems that occurs within health
consultancies is the diagnosis of psychological problems. The main model that is used
for medical practices is the “Biomedical model”. This models supports the idea that
there are specific symptoms for illnesses and therefore there are also specified
treatment. This insinuates that all problems can be solved with medication including
psychological ones. Whereas psychologists may oppose this be saying that problems
can arise not just from physiological aspects of the human but also psychological one
and “the psycho-socio” model states that problems arise from both society and the
context which we live in addition to psychological problems. They also state that
these problems cannot be solved through blind prescription of drugs but a careful
analysis and perhaps even therapeutic techniques.
In conclusion, the health care service faces many problems however, many of these an
be over come if health care is made more accessible to all people and also if the health
service can be made more objective than it has been so far. Nevertheless, it is
important to remember that, in a society based upon judgement and stereotype, which
it is difficult for consultants to do so and they must be allowed to make mistakes. This
point is illustrative. The National Health Service is very good once you can get into it.
If you have a serious problem, if you can get past your General practitioner and actually
get into a hospital, then there isn't a tremendous shortage of scanners and all kinds of
things in the public system. It's getting into the system that is often problematic and most health care consultancies are reliable and efficient.
References:
*Lessons from Britain's National Health Service
Stephen Pollard and Tim Evans moderated by Michael Walker
*The American Iatrogenic Association :
*The self-fulfilling prophecy:
