Health care consultations are a part of every day life and society, and therefore have a big effect on all of society. Health care consultations are often filled with problems as they are based upon interpretation. The problems occur from both sides of this interpretation both from the patients and the consultants. There are also many general and practical problems. These can range from the different models of health that contrast and contradict themselves and also ones to do with the National Health Service. Many of the problems that arise in health care consultancies are often patient born.
There are often many boundaries between the health care consultants and the patients. These can be ones based on racial, socio-economic status and communication problems. Many people from ethnic minorities may have problems seeing their heath consultant because they do not have the correct knowledge of how to go about seeing a consultant and do not understand the opportunities available. This creates problems which means that minor health problems could potentially turn into larger ones. The problems in consultations could also be communication ones, whereby the patient cannot explain their problem.
As consultancies are based upon one on one interaction, this could be a major and problem and prevent correct treatment of the problem. Other problems arise from different socio-economic backgrounds; many people from poorer 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 an 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 atient 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 ere 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 mprisoned 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 an 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.