Medicine

From Ptypeswiki

Revision as of 16:48, 3 May 2006 by Admin (Talk | contribs)

Medicine is the branch of health science and the sector of public life concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the treatment of disease and injury. It is both an area of knowledge – a science of body systems, their diseases and treatment – and the applied practice of that knowledge.

Contents

Overview

Medical care is shared between the medical profession (physicians or doctors) and other professionals such as nurses and

Interdisciplinary fields

Interdisciplinary sub-specialties of medicine are:

Medical education

File:Get lautrec 1901 examination at faculty of medicine.jpg
An image of a 1901 examination in the faculty of medicine.

Template:Main articles

Medical education is education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, either the initial training to become a doctor or further training thereafter.

Medical education and training varies considerably across the world, however typically involves entry level education at a university medical school, followed by a period of supervised practise (Internship and/or Residency) and possibly postgraduate vocational training. Continuing medical education is a requirement of many regulatory authorities.

Various teaching methodologies have been utilised in medical education, which is an active area of educational research.


Legal restrictions

In most countries, it is a legal requirement for medical doctors to be licensed or registered. In general, this entails a medical degree from a university and accreditation by a medical board or an equivalent national organization, which may ask the applicant to pass exams. This restricts the considerable legal authority of the medical profession to doctors that are trained and qualified by national standards. It is also intended as an assurance to patients and as a safeguard against charlatans that practice inadequate medicine for personal gain. While the laws generally require medical doctors to be trained in "evidence based", Western, or Hippocratic Medicine, they are not intended to discourage different paradigms of health and healing, such as alternative medicine or faith healing.


Criticism

Criticism of medicine has a long history. In the Middle Ages, some people did not consider it a profession suitable for Christians, as disease was often considered God sent. However many monastic orders, particularly the Benedictines, considered the care of the sick as their chief work of mercy. Barber-surgeons generally had a bad reputation that was not to improve until the development of academic surgery as a speciality of medicine, rather than an accessory field. Template:Fact

Through the course of the twentieth century, doctors focused increasingly on the technology that was enabling them to make dramatic improvements in patients' health. The ensuing development of a more mechanistic, detached practice, with the perception of an attendant loss of patient-focused care led to further criticisms. This issue started to reach collective professional consciousness in the 1970s and the profession had begun to respond by the 1980s and 1990s. Template:Fact

Perhaps the most devastating criticism of modern medicine came from Ivan Illich. In his 1976 work Medical Nemesis, Illich stated that modern medicine only medicalises disease and causes loss of health and wellness, while generally failing to restore health by eliminating disease. This medicalisation of disease forces the human to become a lifelong patient.Template:Fact Other less radical philosophers have voiced similar views, but none were as virulent as Illich. Another example can be found in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman, 1992, which criticises over reliance on technological means in medicine.Template:Fact

Criticism of modern medicine has led to some improvements in the curricula of medical schools, which now teach students systematically on medical ethics, holistic approaches to medicine, the biopsychosocial model and similar concepts.

The inability of modern medicine to properly address many common complaints continues to prompt many people to seek support from alternative medicine. Although most alternative approaches lack scientific validation, some report improvement of symptoms after obtaining alternative therapies. The bioscience medical paradigm and the alternative / complementary health care paradigms may differ to such an extent that what constitutes scientific evidence is contested.Template:Fact Many medical doctors also practice alternative medicine alongside "orthodox" medicine.

Medical errors are also the focus of many complaints and negative coverage. Practitioners of human factors engineering believe that there is much that medicine may usefully gain by emulating concepts in aviation safety, where it was long ago realized that it is dangerous to place too much responsibility on one "superhuman" individual and expect him or her not to make errors. Reporting systems and checking mechanisms are becoming more common in identifying sources of error and improving practice.

Radical critics of certain medical traditions may hold that whole fields or traditions of medicine are intrinsically harmful or ineffective. They would reject any use or support of practices belonging to that tradition.Template:Fact However, generally, there is spectrum of efficacy on which all traditions lie; some are more effective, some are less effective, but nearly all contain some harmful practices and some effective ones. Naturally, though, most individuals or groups seeking a health care practice to improve their own health would seek a tradition with the maximum degree of efficacy.


See also

References

External links

Template:Wikibookspar Template:Commons

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Medicine".

Retrieved from "http://editthis.info/Ptypeswiki/Medicine"
Personal tools