3.6 Ethical practice and accountability: the role and function of professional bodies The UK's medical profession is regulated by the General Medical Council (GMC). One of the main ways in which the GMC, and other regulatory bodies, influences its members is through its code of ethics. This sets out broad principles, rather than detailed guidance, for how practitioners should behave in specific circumstances. This is necessary because a practitioner retains individual accountability and ultimate responsibility for decisions taken during professional practice. Not all br
2.12 The future of the therapeutic relationship As discussed earlier in this extract, therapeutic relationships are subject to constant review and reinterpretation. As the culture changed, the predominant shift in health care was away from paternalistic forms of relationships based on professional expertise towards partnership models in which the patient has more rights but also more responsibilities. This final section looks to the future and considers some of the factors that can impact on therapeutic relationships in CAM.
2.1 Introduction This extract examines the main areas of criticism of the therapeutic relationship in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Both social scientists and media commentators have extensively critiqued what some people call a ‘therapy culture’. Many critics have questioned the dependency that some users develop in their use of CAM and voice concerns about the ways in which the therapeutic relationship can be abused. In challenging some of the assertions made on behalf of CAM practitione
1.12 Conclusion to Extract 1 The biomedical model that dominated health professional–user interactions for the past 100 years or so marginalised and appeared to devalue certain aspects of the individual and personal experience of illness. However, health care provision is now more user-centred in the prevailing biopsychosocial model. Despite the diversity of health beliefs, the edifice of modern medicine is built on a dominant scientific perspective, which promotes a certain world view at the expense of other cosmologi
1.10 Concepts of healing: philosophies underpinning CAM practice Read the following accounts by individual CAM practitioners of four different modalities. These are personal perspectives, which may vary 1.3 Components and origins of health beliefs Health beliefs, like other personal beliefs, are learned. Knowledge about health and illness is built up from childhood onwards, from diverse sources including family, social networks, community and religion, and through ‘official’ government health messages. Individual health beliefs, while rarely ‘scientific’ in themselves, none the less are grounded in experience, modified over time in the light of that experience, and rational in the light of people's wider belief systems and worl 1.6.4 Blogs The founder ofTechnorati  claims that the number of ‘blogs’doubles every five months and that the creation rate is approaching two per second. One estimate I read in July 2010 put the number at 400 million ‘blogs’. Because these online diaries offer instant publishing opportunities, you potentially have access to a wealth of knowledge from commentators and experts (if they blog) in a wi 1.5.4 The 5 Ds If you don’t use a system at all, then you could suffer from the effects of information overload: losing important information wasting time on trying to find things ending up with piles of physical and virtual stuff everywhere One technique you might like to apply to your files (be they paper or electronic) is the 5Ds. Try applying these and see if you can reduce your information overload.
1.5.1 Why is it important to be organised? 87% of items that are filed into a filing cabinet are never looked at again. STANFORD UNIVERSITY
In 2010, the world’s digital information output was estimated to pass 1.2zettabytes – A zettabyte is a new term which equals a thousand billion gigabytes. University of California (Berkley)
A new blog is created every second TECHNORATI
10% of salary costs are wasted as e 1.4.3 R is for Relevance Relevance is an important factor to consider when you are evaluating information. It isn’t so much a property of the information itself but of the relationship it has with your question or your ‘information need’. For example, if you are writing an essay about obesity in the United States, a book or website about health problems in Australasia would probably not be relevant. So there are a number of ways in which a piece of information may not be relevant to your query: 1.3.8 Statistics There is a lot of statistical data on the internet relating to health and lifestyle. 1.3.5 Images Images can also be found online. Some useful image databases are: 1.1.5 Organising information How confident are you that you know when it is appropriate to cite references (refer to the work of other people) in your written work? 5 – Very confident 4 – Confident 3 – Fairly confident 2 – Not very confident 1 – Not confident at all How confident do you feel about producing bibliographies (lists of references) in an appropriate format to accompany you 4.1 Unit themes and social work values The next activity asks you to consider the relationship between the unit themes and value requirements for social care workers set out below. 1.6 Valuing diversity Social workers need to recognise diversity: valuing and respecting service users – irrespective of, for example, their ethnicity, gender or age – is central to good practice. It is also about working in a way that counters the unfair or unequal treatment of individuals or groups on the basis of their race, gender, class, age, culture, religion, sexuality or ability. There is a growing body of law that seeks to prohibit and punish a range of discriminatory behaviours in various kinds of so 8 Conclusion Young babies can do more than we often give them credit for. From birth they are active participants in life, making sense of their worlds and influencing them. In this, they need other people to help them, and other children and relatives can play a big part in their lives. Through Mia and her Family's experience of her birth, you have seen the significance of other people to her. You have also been introduced to two other families with babies the same age as Mia. They live in differen 3.2 Types of placement in foster care The Nottinghamshire Pathfinder Trust (2005) describe the following different types of placement in foster care Short-term placements may be chosen for example, when there are relationship difficulties between parents and children or when the principal carers or parents have serious health problems. Placements can vary from an overnight stay to one of several weeks. Support foster care offers short breaks to parents and ch Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: Knowledge outline a range of different reasons – social, personal, health, economic, family-based – that cause children to be separated from their families of origin and to live in different settings; Skills demonstrate the development of key transferable study skills including the ability to summarise arguments, learn from personal experience, and apply theory to issues and dile 4.1 Introduction In the previous section we examined some of the factors that affect young people's chances of experiencing mental health problems. This section continues the focus on mental health but takes a more positive stance, exploring the factors that promote young people's mental health and that might enable them to cope with threats to their emotional wellbeing. However, it will be important to carry forward the conclusions reached in previous sections, about diversity and inequality in young people' 3.1 Young people's mental health: diversity and inequality We will now focus on young people's mental and emotional wellbeing, as a way of exploring how social divisions create diverse and unequal health experiences for young people. Earlier in the unit we cited claims that young people today are experiencing an increase in mental health problems. What is certainly clear is that there has been an increasing concern in the media and elsewhere about young people's mental health, resulting in a range of reports and initiatives. But ho
Activity 5: Health beliefs in CAM
Author(s):
Department of Health
Contains information about the aims and objectives of the Department, National Health Service (NHS) policy and guidance, the NHS Events diary, lists of DOH publications,
Flickr
A photo sharing website that contains pictures relating to all subjects. Note that in order to reuse a picture from this site you may need to get the permission of the person who uploaded the photo.
Activity 4 Unit themes and social work values
