Health Studies, Early Briton and the Nhs

Mr. Gawande starts his literature on washing hands. He introduces two friends a microbiologist and an infectious disease specialist. Both work hard and diligently against the spread of diseases just like Semmelweis who is mentioned in the chapter. Something I learned, that not many realize, is that each year two million people acquire an infection while they are in the hospital. Mainly because the clinicians only wash their hands one-third to one-half as many times as they should. Semmelweis, mentioned earlier, concluded in 1847 that doctors themselves were to blame for childbed fever, which was the leading cause of

Two of the three models of health and healing discussed by Dossey (1999) were Era II Body/Mind Model of the 1950s and Era III Body/Mind/Spirit Model of the 1990s. According to Dossey (1999), post World War II the Medical Doctors noticed that there was proof that the functioning of the human body can be affected by other factors such as stress and emotions which, can lead to diseases such as ulcers and high blood pressure. This model brought to light the realization that treating the human body is complex because when the physical body is not well the mentation of the patient is affected resulting in exacerbation of other

Historically, Western Medicine has been divided into Eras. The first ERA, noted in the 1860’s, was referred to as the Mechanical Model. The medical world, as well as society, viewed illness as a purely physical entity. The mental and emotional components of illness were often considered as an afterthought. The second ERA, as described in the mid-twentieth century, is named the Mind/Body ERA. This was the time where attention was brought forth that there is a connection between the consciousness and the physical aspects of health and illness. Pscho-somatics was a coined phrase around this time. The third ERA is known as the Quantum Physics Paradigm (Dossey,1982). This era identifies transpersonal presence as its basis and accepts that the mind and the body, as well as non-local energies, affect health and illness.

Biomedical model of health is an approach which eliminates psychological and social factors (environment) but only comprises biological issues in trying to recognize or understand an individual`s medical illness/disorder. The biomedical model of health looks upon treatment in expression of changing the body by medical intervention forms. Also this model seeks to look at what is wrong and fix that part of individual as it focuses on illness rather than health as well as diagnosing an individual`s illness.

Throughout Sherwin B. Nuland’s book The Doctor’s Plague, Nuland discusses the devastating epidemic of childbed fever. One out of six women to give birth in the First Division at the Krankenhaus hospital in Vienna, Austria was to succumb to this supposed mystery illness. Childbed fever was a harrowing complication not only at the Krankenhaus in Vienna, but all over other parts of Europe as well. Nuland takes us through this occasion and draws his attention to Ignac Semmelweis, an assistant physician at Krankenhaus who unearths the real reason behind the incredibly high mortality rate of expectant new to be mothers. Semmelweis traces the origin of this mysterious illness to the delivering doctors and students of the hospital in the First division

The hygiene movement helped in the avoidance of communicable diseases, diseases for example cholera, tuberculosis and water illnesses in large part by modifying the people surroundings. In the 1850s, John Snow assisted in recognized the importance in data collection and documentation. His actions terminated an outbreak of cholera in a district of London. Using the same methodology Ignaz Semmelweis, applied it to restraint fever of childbirth a major source of maternal mortality. The reason that this was happening was that after physicians worked on the death bodies, usually they did not wash their and delivered babies and contaminating both, the mother and the baby.

The approach attributes complex events or phenomena to many causes. All these three components affect how a person develops. The biopsychosocial model is used in many fields because of how it examines how different factors affect an individual. Biological factors are usually due to genetics which are ingrained aspects of an individual such as hair color and skin tone. Biological factors also include other aspects such as brain changes and functioning of major body organs like kidney, liver or one’s motor skills. Psychological factors include aspects such as emotions, behaviors, thoughts, coping skills and temperament. The social component of biopsychosocial theory looks at social factors such as one’s culture, interactions with others, and one’s economic status (Newman & Newman, 2014). The theory is used in examining mental health disorders, social disorders and the general development of an

Florence Nightingale was one of the first medical professionals to realize a need for sanitation during surgery during her time as a nurse in the Crimean War. She and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, and greatly reduced the death count. In 1860, she funded the establishment of St. Thomas’ Hospital and Nightingale Training School for Nurses. She used her experience from the Crimean War to implement the beginnings of modern hospital infection control practices in St. Thomas’ Hospital. Nightingale’s practices were not the sole research and experimentation surrounding antisepsis. Many scientists studied death rates and the notion that air was the cause of infection and death. Dr. Joseph Lister did not believe in this notion, so he conducted a study that proved microorganisms, bacteria, caused infections. His study became known as the germ theory of infection, and launched the field of bacteriology. By 1870 he demonstrated that his antiseptic system could prevent most infectious complications of surgery. Despite Lister’s abundant results, doctors continued to reject antisepsis; it would be another twenty to thirty years before Listerism was adopted. Gross was very adamant on rejecting antisepsis; by 1875 Samuel Gross was the leading obstacle to the adoption of Listerism in

What is the biomedical approach to mental health? "The biomedical model of mental illness assumes that abnormal psychological states or experiences are the results of abnormalities in the brain or genetics and, as such, necessitate medical or chemical

Sanitation, disinfection, and proper sterilization are critical to the development and survival of health care. Lack of proper sanitation may lead to many WASH- related diseases. While now health care professional understand the importance of sanitation many years back basic sanitation was non existence these times was know as the dark age, medieval times, because of the multiple disease and epidemics spread claiming the lives of more than 60 million people due to lack of sanitization (Baratosy, 2015). It wasn’t until the mid 1800’s that it was discovered that by disinfecting, and sanitizing many diseases, which caused high mortality rates, could be controlled (Baratosy, 2015). We now witness a major decrease in spread of infection when compared to the 1800s yet considering the statistical studies done of the spread of infectious diseases in healthcare facilities due to the lack of proper sanitation and disinfection; there is still a ways to go. In 2011 Studies show that 1 out of 20 patients contract an infection after receiving medical

Today, even young children know to wash their hands before they eat or after they go to the bathroom. In mid-19th-century Vienna, however; the idea of washing one's hands to stop the spread of disease was subversive. At that time, one of every six mothers in Europe died of abdominal infection within a few days of giving birth. Doctors had many suspicions about the cause of the disease they called childbed fever. Perhaps the pressure of the uterus on the intestines caused stasis of fecal material that was then absorbed into the veins. It never occurred to anyone that doctors spread the disease by working on cadavers and then, without a stop at the washbasin, delivering babies. A Hungarian physician named Ignác Semmelweis began to suspect that

Semmelweis worked in two hospitals and oversaw the delivery of babies. The first was run by medical students and physicians, and the second by midwives. He observed that the hospital run by medical students and physicians had a much higher rate of puerperal fever (which is a disease that causes the death of mothers after delivery) than the other hospital run by midwives. Through analysis of cases and a method of excluding other possible causes, he came up with a hypothesis that the higher rate of infections in women delivered by physicians and medical students was connected with their handling of corpses during autopsies before coming into contact with the pregnant women. This explained why the second hospital, in which

Ignaz Semmelweis discovered the need for proper handwashing procedures when he began work at a local maternity clinic in Vienna. (Zoltan) Semmelweis made it his mission as a physician to back any inquiries that he made with scientific evidence. (Admin) Many women gave birth at home during this time period, but those who went to local clinics found themselves at risk of contracting this deadly disease. During this period in history, it was still believed that the origin of infectious diseases was caused by miasma, overcrowding, and poor ventilation, Semmelweis dug further to discover the true origin of the disease. (Zoltan)

On the other hand, the Biopsychosocial model developed by Engel (1977) is different from the biomedical model. This is because it considers biological factors that cause illnesses and further expands that illnesses also come about as a result of psychological factors and social factors. Engel (1977) suggests that health and illness interplay of all above three factors and maintains that the mind and body cannot be distinguished in matters of health and illness because both influence an individual’s state of health.

An article in the 1932 American Journal of Nursing states, “It has long been an established fact that one of the most dangerous agents in the transfer of bacteria is the human hand with its five fingers” (Pfefferkorn, 2013). Even the teachings of Florence Nightingale extoled the benefits of handwashing, and warned of the dangers to patient health when proper hand hygiene was not practiced (Hannon & Lankford, 2014). We now know that four out of five pathogens that cause illness are spread by direct contact, and that proper hand hygiene eliminates these pathogens and helps to prevent hospital acquired infections (Linton, 2015; University of Michigan Health System, n.d.).