Free Midwifery Essay Sample

Q1.Describe what the WHO documents mean by ‘reorienting health care’ with reference to the description of primary health care contained in the Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statement.

Healthcare orientation is one of the main objectives of the Alma Ata Declaration and the Ottawa Charter on Health Promotion. Healthcare activities focus on providing curative and clinical services. However, healthcare activities should move away from providing the traditional services and focus on health promotion. Health promotion should incorporate the cultural needs of various people. In addition, health services should support individual and communal needs to improve the people’s health state. In the context of nursing and midwifery consensus statement, nurses and midwives must ensure that their activities help in promoting individuals’ health. The statement propagates the health promotion funding and prevention of sicknesses. In addition, the statement ensures that nurses and midwives address the needs of native communities, such as members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders communities.

Healthcare reorientation also necessitates the incorporation of additional parties into health promotion activities. Thus, individuals, community groups, health practitioners, health service agencies and governments should work together to improve the mankind’s health. Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statement provides several avenues of cooperation between various stakeholders. It ensures that there are respectful partnerships between communities and health care providers, researchers and educators. Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statement ensures that there is a better participation of Australian residents in planning and implementing healthcare activities. It adopts the maxim “nothing about us without us”. This ultimately aids in health promotion.

In order to reorient health services one must focus more on health research and changes in education and training healthcare providers receive. These changes should result in a change of attitude and organisation to ensure that the health practitioners fulfil the individual health needs in a holistic manner. Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statement ensures that there is considerable investment in transdisciplinary training and research to assist healthcare providers in meeting the community needs. In addition, it recognises the knowledge, skills, and experience of healthcare providers and utilizes them in transdisciplinary teams. Meeting the holistic health needs of individuals helps in alleviating the current health problems and prevents their recurrence. Thus, this ultimately helps in promoting health worldwhide.

Q2. The Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statements set out a vision of Primary Health Care. In what ways does the present Australian health care system not support this vision?

The Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statements propose radical changes in the provision of primary healthcare in Australia that would help improve the health state of Australians. To help in health promotion, the Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statements ensure that there is better participation of citizens in identifying priority areas in the prevention of diseases, injuries, and disabilities. People have no control over the priority areas in health that need improvement. The government solely determines the areas that require healthcare improvement in Australia.

The Nursing and Midwifery Consensus Statement proposes a different approach to meeting primary healthcare needs of individuals. It proposes coordination and team based approach in dealing with primary healthcare provision. It ensures that no single professional group leads the provision of primary healthcare needs. Healthcare providers must approach primary healthcare needs in a collaborative manner. Thus, health professionals from different disciplines should collaborate in those endeavours. The individual or community needs dictate the healthcare professionals to lead their teams in order to provide quality healthcare. In addition, the transdisciplinary nature of healthcare provision creates a mix of healthcare professionals who would effectively tackle the health cruxes. The current system does not facilitate working in transdisciplinary teams to help in health promotion. Emphasis is usually on a particular health discipline. This approach sometimes counters the efforts and achievements of other health disciplines.

In addition, healthcare providers must ensure that they meet the holistic individuals’ healthcare needs. Healthcare providers should incorporate body, mind, spirit, environment, culture, custom and socio-economic status of their patients. Healthcare providers should use practical, scientifically and socially acceptable technologies and methods, to improve the efficiency of this approach. Holistic approach to healthcare assists in properly promoting health care and helps in solving healthcare needs that the common approach would not detect. Thus, this approach helps in recurrence of various ailments and improves the health state of individuals. This approach is non-existent in the current healthcare system. Doctors mainly treat the symptoms of various ailments. However, this does not make them solve the root causes of the problems leading to the problems’ recurrences.

Q3. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of the social model of health with special reference to the social issues around maturity and onset diabetes.

Social health model considers the health of an individual or community to be due to complex and interacting social, environmental, economic and personal factors. Social model health provides central conditions that healthy individuals should have. Failure to adhere to these conditions would result in ailments. The ability to access, assimilate, and utilize health information determines the health of the individual or community. The broad range of determinants helps medical practitioners detect medical conditions easier than when applying other models. Thus, it would be easy for medical practitioners to determine various factors that may make people get type II diabetes. This would help the medical practitioner devise strategies that would make the individual manage the disease effectively.

In addition, the social model observes healthcare as the primary responsibility of all society members. Therefore, this social model can associate various activities to the health of the individuals or society. This approach is extremely beneficial in solving health-related problems that exist in a community due to certain community characteristics. Thus, the social model would help in determining community behaviours, and what an individual should do with respect to these behaviours in order to manage type II diabetes. How long an individual would live after the onset of diabetes depends greatly on various social factors.

One of the distinct social health model disadvantages is the fact that it does not directly measure the degree of health problems. It determines the general health condition of the community and uses this as a basis of determining the individual’s health. However, this may sometimes present wrong results as not all individuals conform to the characteristics of the society. Therefore, this method would not directly determine the extent of type 2 diabetes.

The other disadvantage of the social health model is that it can only determine certain social health cruxes. However, this model is unable to address most of the health determinants. A healthcare provider would be able to determine certain factors that make people in a certain community be at risk of suffering from type II diabetes, but would not be able to address the problems that people in this community face. Some of the problems may be beyond the model’s control.

Q4. Explain why evidence of social inequality is important for understanding primary health care? How is this understanding of health useful to nurses and midwives?

Social status directly affects the health status of individuals. It determines whether the individual will enrol in various health programs or not. Income inequality reduces the amount of money that people spend on health projects. This ultimately affects their health condition. In addition, individuals, who are economically inferior in comparison to their peers, tend to have adverse health effects. These individuals are prone to depression, which deteriorates their health. Social inequality also exposes these people to other psychological conditions that deteriorate their health. Thus, it is pertinent to say that two individuals with diverse incomes have corresponding health states, as the poorer one cannot receive proper treatment if needed, while the richer one constantly improves his/her health state.

Poor people are likely to engage in activities that are detrimental to their health. They may engage in smoking, drinking or even overeating. This may expose them to a myriad of health problems that arise due to engaging in these habits. Thus, in societies that have large levels of income inequalities people, who have low incomes, are prone to more health problems than people who have higher incomes. Conversely, people who have higher levels of income are less likely to smoke or consume alcohol. In addition, these people have more exercise than people who have low levels of income. However, in some instances the poor people may engage in health activities that are similar to those of people who have higher levels of income. However, this does not prevent them from having poor health status compared to people who have high levels of income. Paula Lantz and her colleagues carried out a research that proved that, despite poor people engaged in healthcare activities, they had lower health state compared to people who had higher levels of income. Therefore, psychological factors cause the difference in health status between these two social classes.

An understanding of social inequality would help in the formulation of various primary healthcare programs to address the needs of various social groups. It would help nurses and midwives identify problems associated with social inequality and help in treating the problems efficiently. Lack of understanding these cruxes may affect the efficiency of various healthcare projects that nurses and midwives conduct. People who perceive they are inferior have the most health problems that nurses and midwives should solve. Psychological perception of the poor causes most of the health problems.

 

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