Scottish Diabetes Analysis

The National Health System began in 1948 with the aim to provide free health care for the English thus removing health access inequities. This essay considers two strengths of the NHS, being free health and locally responsive health care and two weaknesses being the financial burden and unprecedented pressure on health care resources.

Diabetes has recently become a focal point of health care systems around the world due to its high prevalence and the severity of secondary complications caused by the disease. Over the course of my project on diabetes, I have had the opportunity to speak with a group of diabetics to understand from a patient’s perspective how diabetes is managed in a rural community. While I found that while some patients ignored treatment and refused to make any dietary changes, the majority of the patients I interviewed were well-informed and actively managing diabetes in their everyday life.

Background Audience Relevance: Diabetes is a disease that now in days is becoming more common to society because of the lifestyle in which many of us eat and how easy and cheap it is to obtain unhealthy fast food.

The National health services (NHS) provides a comprehensive healthcare services across the entire nation. It is considered to be UK’s proudest institution, and is envied by many other countries because of its free of cost health delivery to its population. Nevertheless, it is often seen as a ‘political football’ as it affects all of us in some way and hence everyone carry an opinion about it (Cass, 2006). Factors such as government policies, funding, number of service users, taxation etc all make up small parts of this large complex organisation. Therefore, any imbalances within one sector can pose a substantial risk on the overall NHS (Wheeler & Grice, 2000). This essay will discuss whether the NHS aim of reducing the nations need

Although heredity plays an important role whether a person inherits diabetes and to what extent, it can be controlled through useful methods that are affordable. By changing environmental risk factors, people can reduce their risk of developing diabetes. Increasing awareness of diabetes which is a major setback for some socio-economical background and rural areas as not enough awareness is made to the general public. Identifying people at risk for the disease is also another

This essay will focus on type 2 diabetes, which is becoming one of the fast growing chronic health conditions in the United Kingdom (UK). Approximately 700 people are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes each day in the UK (Diabetes Uk, (2014)a). It is costing the NHS about £10billion pounds each year to treat diabetes along with its complication and it is expected to rise in the next couple of years (Diabetes UK, (2014)b).

By examining both the United States health care system and the British health care system, it will provide insight of which elements of each system are beneficiary and which elements of each system are disadvantages. Therefore, this paper will provide an overview of the pros and cons of each system to decide where improvements need to be made.

Many Americans are concern about the increment of disease and obesity caused by the limited options of healthy food, “since America is saturated with junk food advertising”(Khullar 135). However, in consequence of the absence of an American cuisine, fast food restaurants and foods high in fats offered by supermarkets, has become the first option to Americans. After all, Pollan’s argument that the lack of a stable traditional cuisine is the consequence of America’s national eating disorder and the steady national diet is reasonable since there are many factors that support his claim. For example, Mary Roach, in Liver and Opinions: Why We Eat What We Eat and Despite the Rest, claims that the food we eat is influenced by people’s cultural background; in other words, people are used to eating what their parents feed them when they were kids. “In addition, Americans have a conflict with having a stable eating habit; they tend to change their diet often”(Roach 123). Overall, Pollan’s is comprehensible while he argues that Americans do not have a stable culture of food, which causes an instability in people’s

al., 2011). Health service accessibility by individuals in rural and remote areas is a problem central to both countries. Reports indicate that compared with metropolitan populations, non-metropolitan populations, in both Australia and the UK, experience poor access to health services (Watt, Franks, Sheldon, 1994, p. 16). As in the primary care sector of the UK, majority of the doctors in Australia are self-employed and reimbursed on a fee-for-service approach (Gillies, 2003, p. 77). GP’s are the initial point of contact for patients in both Australia and the UK. Additional specialist medical services such as physiotherapy and optometry are only available when patients are provided with a formal referral from their GPs (Piterman, Koritsas, 2005). Although the NHS is similar to the Australian health system in certain ways, both systems also possess some differences.

According to Zimmet (2001), about 150 million people in the world have been suffering with diabetes and it would be 300 million by 2025. Another interesting study by AusDiab in 2000 revelead that 7.4% of the population aged 25 or over had diabetes (type 2 in 90%) Since 1981, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes has increased to twice in and the total number of cases has increased threefold in Australia (Dunstain 2002).Although type 2 diabetes is effecting all races,it was identified highly in south Asians and also worlds one-third diabetic population is from indian continent ( Jean 2008). According to the report from Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in United states of America, nearly 25.8 million people have been affected by diabetes in 2010 with 90- 95% of them being type 2 DM (CDC 2011). However, type 2 diabetes mellitus which is characterized by the deficiency and resistance of the

There are many negative aspects of the NHS. There are stunning reports of people who didn’t get care, or who waited for months in order to get prevented care. One example of a terrible thing that happened recently in Great Britain was a cancer patient who had to wait for 62 weeks before starting treatment. Patients were outraged by this. They said that for some cancer patients with slow growing tumors could wait that long but that it is atrocious that someone would have to wait that long to receive any type of care at all. It was compared side by side with a case from 20 years earlier, when Heather Goodare was diagnosed with the same problem and received treatment within two weeks after first being diagnosed.

This essay aims to identify diabetes as a public health issue, and to facilitate the discussion in the delivery of health promotion, the health risk of type 2 diabetes among south Asians from the Indian subcontinent in the UK will be discussed. This essay will use epidemiological data to demonstrate the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among South Asians in the UK, and also the determinants of health affecting this population. National policies and health promotion approaches will be explored in relation to type 2 diabetes among south Asians in the UK and how these influence the role of the nurse in health promotion. The barriers of health promotion will also be identified along with ways in which they can be overcome by the nurse.

The NHS has been servicing the nation since its inception on 1948 and it is famous the world over. Prior to the NHS we had no public health care if you wanted to see a doctor you had to pay, there was a small provision for the poorest in the Poor Law 1601, which was amended in the 1834 The Poor Law Amendment Act, and then we had to wait till 1942 with the Beveridge report which the NHS is based on. During the last 60yrs the NHS has seen many changes in legislation and policy, some of these

The United Kingdom utilizes a national health service. This service is government owned and controlled. Most practitioners are employees of the government and hospitals are government run. Taxes provide nearly 80% of the funding for their health program. The remainders of the cost are covered by employee and employer contributions. Most providers and hospitals are public, although there is a small but growing private sector. The citizens of the United Kingdom pay nothing for visits to their physician or hospital stays. They also can choose which providers they want to visit and have “good access to primary care” (Hohman, 2006). The United Kingdom ranked number 18 in overall healthcare (WHO 2000) while spending only 8.4% of its gross domestic product (Kaiser EDU). In a recent poll, 79% of UK citizens “agreed that the NHS provided them with good service” (Health Science Journal, 2009).

In line with the majority of other developed countries, the United Kingdom (UK) has offered its citizens a universal health care system that is free at the point of service. Funded primarily by taxation, the system is popular and efficient. However, along with most other health care systems around the world, it faces a series of challenges if it is to maintain viability, in the twenty-first century. These issues include; long waiting times, an aging population, funding challenges and the increasing cost of technology.