Unit 7 P2 and M1 The Functionalist Approach Talcott parsons suggests for society to function efficiently its members need to be healthy. Talcott describes illness as a form of deviance and that ill members are performing a social role, a sick role. The right associated with the sick role were being exempt from school, college or work and meeting social and family obligations. Talcott also describes that the ill members are to be cared for by family members, he describes this as the key function of the family. The responsibilities of the sick role include things like the individual taking all the reasonable steps to get better and to resume normal living as soon as possible.
P2 criteria: explain different sociological approaches to health and ill-health I have been asked to explain different sociological approaches to health and ill-health and how it affects the people within this society. Different definitions of health There are many ways this can be shown but one of the most important ones is different definitions of health. Wellness is first and foremost a choice to assume responsibility for the quality of your life. It begins with a conscious decision to shape a healthy lifestyle. Wellness is a mind set, a predisposition to adopt a series of key principles in varied life areas that lead to high levels of well-being and life satisfaction.
An individual is responsible for their own health and decision which means they should be able to decide if they want any medical treatments for their illness to get better. People must ensure that they look after their own health such as personal hygiene and eat healthy diets when they are ill. The responsibilities of the sick role included: The sick person talking all the reasonable steps to get better and seeking to resume their normal place in society as soon as possible. Co – operating with medical professionals and choosing affective measures to improve their health condition. Every single individual in the society have their own roles and responsibility.
The functionalist approach The functionalist approach is seen as a structural consensus theory in which health is studying the relationship between the sick individual and its affects on the society as a whole. Talcott Parsons stated that using the traditional functionalist approach, for the society to function efficiently the members of the society need to be free from illness and must be in good health so that society can conform to a general level of running smoothly with the 4 pillars of society . The functionalist view of health and social care believes that medicine serves the safety of society as a whole and that the public are protected from people whom may want to abuse or damage the system. The society’s role is controlling limiting the abuse of the sick role by acting as a gate keeper and legitimates absence from work for individuals. This can be achieved by protecting the public from corrupt practice.
However, it is because the medical professionals played such a large role in the negative social perception of marginalized groups that they have a duty to change it for the better. Other critics, such as authors John H. Knowles and Thomas Szasz, believe it should be the individual’s responsibility to take care of their personal health, not the responsibility of medical professionals. Szasz states that doctors are only tasked with the responsibility to diagnose a patient and to treat the patient, only if consent is given (Szasz 84). Knowles argues that individuals are responsible for their own healthcare and too much blame is deflected to society. However, Knowles acknowledges that medical professionals play a role with regards to helping people take responsibility for their healthcare.
However, before going further, I will like to analyse the definition of health; as defined by other various institutions. The concept of health and its definition has remained very controversial, even to date because it is understood very differently by professionals and lay people. Blaxter, 2004:3, once said, “The meaning of health is neither simple nor unchanging”. The biomedical perspective on health earlier focused on the body’s ability to function, seeing health as a state of normal function that could be disrupted from time to time by disease. According to the World Health Organization, health is; “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not
Including emphysema, lung cancer and chronic bronchitis. Smoking has negative effects on every part of our anatomy and generally deteriorates the health of one’s body. They are aware of the dangers of smoking, but that doesn't deter a lot of people from doing it anyway. So if you are going to prevent smokers from receiving NHS treatment, because of their knowledge of the risks, you must automatically add a vast array of other patient groups into that situation, such as people who drink excessively, if they get an associated illness, people who are obese from lack of exercise and/or over eating and even sports men and women who take part in any activity that could cause an injury, such as rugby or rock climbing. Perversely the beneficial aspects of smoking must be considered too.
M1 – biomedical and social – medical models of health The biomedical model of health looks at individual physical functioning and describes bad health and illness as the presence of disease and symptoms of illness as a result of physical causes such as injury or infections and doesn’t look at the social and psychological factors. E.g. biomedical models assume that the complexity of individual can be reduced so that by accumulating facts about the parts that make up their body a decision about how to fix that part will result in health Its weakness of this model is that it lies in its failure to fully include psychosocial factors which have proven to be powerful co-factors of disease in modern society. The strength of the biomedical model is its proven success as a roadmap for diagnosis and treatment of a multitude of diseases over the past two centuries The social model of health looks at how society and our environment affect our everyday health and wellbeing, including factor such as social class, occupation, education, income and poverty, poor diet and pollution. E.g.
Individual's approach to this difficult stage of life may be very different from considering it as the beginning of a new life through fear up to denying. Disregarding person's attitude towards what is happening to them they need help in many ways. From mine, care assistant's point of view the most important aspects of end of life care are: psychological and spiritual support (if requested), basic personal hygiene, supporting with eating and drinking and meeting continence needs. Another one which does not belong to my duties is administering proper medication which is basically pain reliefs. I work in a care home on two nursing units where very often I have to take care about terminally ill patients.
Women found the idea of antenatal care to be shameful, especially if the examination were done by male health workers. Religious barriers noted were not considered to be too strong to get in the way of ANC care. Religious and cultural barriers could be overcome in these countries by providing husbands with information about the benefits of ANC, and by asking for community and religious leaders to announce that women receiving ANC did not violate ‘purdah’, or customary women’s seclusion from men. Advice about the importance of ANC from health workers, and from