The State of Medicine

The State of Medicine PDF Author: Margaret McCartney
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781780664002
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The NHS is 'the closest thing the UK has to a national religion'. No wonder: it has worked secular miracles. Before the NHS, sick children could not see a doctor before a sixpence was handed over. People died of whooping cough and tuberculosis, illnesses we now scarcely see. When the NHS was founded, almost 70 years ago, people in the UK lived less than 50 years on average - a lifespan which has almost doubled. No matter how poor we are, our health care is included with British citizenship. But the NHS has also been accused of high death rates, lazy and uncaring staff, dirty hospitals and unbridgeable funding gaps. Every politician claims to know how to save the NHS. Margaret McCartney argues differently. She believes that the NHS is world class: but politicians have to stop micromanaging based on faith in their own political beliefs and instead base decisions on evidence. Patients and professionals working together to deliver an evidence-based NHS is the only future - if we want our NHS to survive.

The Future of Public Health

The Future of Public Health PDF Author: Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309581907
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

Access to Health Care in America

Access to Health Care in America PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047420
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.

State Medical Boards and the Politics of Public Protection

State Medical Boards and the Politics of Public Protection PDF Author: Carl F. Ameringer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
This book offers the first comprehensive political account of state medical boards. Drawing on board records and files, interviews with prominent physicians, and his own experience as former assistant attorney general in charge of administrative prosecutions, Carl F. Ameringer reconstructs the political maelstrom surrounding physician discipline before and after the advent of managed care. He shows how the widening scope of conflict in the health-care field and improvements in case management and reporting techniques led to a substantial increase in the number of disciplinary actions in the 1980s and 1990s. And he describes the battles fought between state boards and their founding professional associations over efforts to prosecute physicians for drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and poor technical performance.

Public Health and the Risk Factor

Public Health and the Risk Factor PDF Author: William G. Rothstein
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1580461271
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
A risk factor is anything that increases the risk of disease in an individual.

The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine

The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine PDF Author: James Le Fanu
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780786709670
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
In the years following World War II, medicine won major battles against smallpox, diphtheria, and polio. In the same period it also produced treatments to control the progress of Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia. It made realities of open-heart surgery, organ transplants, test-tube babies. Unquestionably, the medical accomplishments of the postwar years stand at the forefront of human endeavor, yet progress in recent decades has slowed nearly to a halt. In this winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, medical doctor and columnist James Le Fanu both surveys the glories of medicine in the postwar years and analyzes the factors that for the past twenty-five years have increasingly widened the gulf between achievement and advancement: the social theories of medicine, ethical issues, and political debates over health care that have hobbled the development of vaccines and discovery of new "miracle" cures. While fully demonstrating the extraordinary progress effected by medical research in the latter half of the twentieth century, Le Fanu also identifies the perils that confront medicine in the twenty-first. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs add to what the Los Angeles Times cited as "a sobering, contrarian challenge" to the "nostrum of medicine as a never-ending font of ‘miracle cures'." "[From] a respected science writer ... important information that ... has been overlooked or ignored by many physicians." —New Republic "Provocative and engrossing and informative." —Houston Chronicle "Marvelously written, meticulously researched ... one of the most thought-provoking and important works to appear in recent years." —Choice

American Medicine and the Public Interest

American Medicine and the Public Interest PDF Author: Rosemary Stevens
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520210097
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 622

Book Description
This reissue offers an opportunity to consider the state of the American health care system. The text chronicles the development of the medical profession and shows how increasing emphasis on specialization has influenced medical education and public policy. It details specialization's effects on health care costs and on health care providers, as well as the implications of technology and the resulting ethical dilemmas, the issues of insurance, and many people's limited access to care.

The Social Transformation of American Medicine

The Social Transformation of American Medicine PDF Author: Paul Starr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780465079353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries. "The definitive social history of the medical profession in America....A monumental achievement."—H. Jack Geiger, M.D., New York Times Book Review

The Medical Book

The Medical Book PDF Author: Clifford A. Pickover
Publisher: Union Square + ORM
ISBN: 1402792336
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 820

Book Description
A lively, accessible, and fully illustrated guide to the history of medicine, from ancient practices to cutting edge innovations. Clifford Pickover continues his popular series that includes The Physics Book and The Math Book with this volume chronicling the advancement of medicine in 250 entertaining, illustrated landmark events. Touching on such diverse subspecialties as genetics, pharmacology, neurology, sexology, and immunology, Pickover intersperses “obvious” historical milestones—the Hippocratic Oath, general anesthesia, the Human Genome Project—with unexpected and intriguing topics like “truth serum,” the use of cocaine in eye surgery, and face transplants.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309133424
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
Integration of complementary and alternative medicine therapies (CAM) with conventional medicine is occurring in hospitals and physicians offices, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are covering CAM therapies, insurance coverage for CAM is increasing, and integrative medicine centers and clinics are being established, many with close ties to medical schools and teaching hospitals. In determining what care to provide, the goal should be comprehensive care that uses the best scientific evidence available regarding benefits and harm, encourages a focus on healing, recognizes the importance of compassion and caring, emphasizes the centrality of relationship-based care, encourages patients to share in decision making about therapeutic options, and promotes choices in care that can include complementary therapies where appropriate. Numerous approaches to delivering integrative medicine have evolved. Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States identifies an urgent need for health systems research that focuses on identifying the elements of these models, the outcomes of care delivered in these models, and whether these models are cost-effective when compared to conventional practice settings. It outlines areas of research in convention and CAM therapies, ways of integrating these therapies, development of curriculum that provides further education to health professionals, and an amendment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act to improve quality, accurate labeling, research into use of supplements, incentives for privately funded research into their efficacy, and consumer protection against all potential hazards.