One of the most obvious ways in which to ensure impartiality in a health care system is to require impartiality of all actors in the system, i.e. to give
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health care professionals a duty to treat everyone impartially and to deny them the ‘right’ to give their patients preferential treatment. And one of the possible side-effects of allowing individual health care professionals to give preference to ‘their clients’ is to create inequality in health care. This paper explores the conflict and proposes that it can be right to give preference to ‘your’ patients in certain circumstances.
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Healthcare 2020, 8(1), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8010026
The current article is an integrative and analytical literature review on the concept and meaning of empathy in health and social
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care professionals. Empathy, i.e., the ability to understand the personal experience of the patient without bonding with them, constitutes an important communication skill for a health professional, one that includes three dimensions: the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. It has been proven that health professionals with high levels of empathy operate more efficiently as to the fulfillment of their role in eliciting therapeutic change.The empathetic professional comprehends the needs of the health care users, as the latter feel safe to express the thoughts and problems that concern them. Although the importance of empathy is undeniable, a significantly high percentage of health professionals seem to find it difficult to adopt a model of empathetic communication in their everyday practice. Some of the factors that negatively influence the development of empathy are the high number of patients that professionals have to manage, the lack of adequate time, the focus on therapy within the existing academic culture, but also the lack of education in empathy. Developing empathetic skills should not only be the underlying objective in the teaching process of health and social care undergraduate students, but also the subject of the lifelong and continuous education of professionals
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This handbook is for health care providers involved in the care of girls and women who have been subjected to any form of female genital mutilation
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(FGM). This includes obstetricians and gynaecologists, surgeons, general medical practitioners, midwives, nurses and other country-specific health professionals. Health-care professionals providing mental health care, and educational and psychosocial support – such as psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and health educators – will also find this handbook helpful.
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he WHO Guidelines on Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) propose evidence-based recommendations for health care
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professionals to prevent, slow or reverse declines in the physical and mental capacities of older people. These recommendations require countries to place the needs and preferences of older adults at the centre and to coordinate care. The ICOPE Guidelines will allow countries to improve the health and well-being of their older populations, and to move closer to the achievement of universal health coverage for all at all ages
Brochure available in Russian, Arabic, Chinese, French; Japanese; Spanisch
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We will soon be piloting a project titled “Integrating Spirituality into Patient Care” that will form “spiritual care teams” to assess and address patients’ spiritual needs in physician o
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utpatient practices within Adventist Health System, the largest Protestant healthcare system in the United States.This paper describes the goals, the rationale, and the structure of the spiritual care teams that will soon be implemented, and discusses the barriers to providing spiritual care that health professionals are likely to encounter.Spiritual care teams may operate in an outpatient or an inpatient setting, and their purpose is to provide health professionals with resources necessary to practice whole person healthcare that includes spiritual care.We believe that this project will serve as a model forfaith-based health systems seeking to visibly demonstrate their mission in a way that makes them unique and expresses their values.Not only does this model have the potential to be cost-effective, but also the capacity to increase the quality of patient care and the satisfaction that health professionals derive from providing care.If successful, this model could spread beyond faith-based systems to secular systems as well both in the U.S. and worldwide.
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This toolkit consists of eight modules which have been prepared as stand-alone documents that can be read by themselves, but they have also been prepared to complement one another. It has been designed as a tool for health
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professionals and students in the health care and public health sectors who want to engage more directly on the issue of climate change as educators with their patients, peers and communities, and/or as advocates for the policies, programs and practices needed to mitigate climate change and/or prepare for climate change in their workplaces and communities
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This document is intended for a wide audience including national and local policymakers, implementers and managers of national and local maternal and child health programmes, non-governmental and other organizations and professional societies involv
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ed in the planning and management of maternal and child health services, health professionals including obstetricians, midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners, academic staff involved in training health professionals, managers of maternal and child health programmes and public health policymakers in all settings.
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Manual for use in primary care.
There is substantial evidence for the benefits of screening and brief intervention in primary health care for alc
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ohol problems. However, there is a need for screening and brief interventions with cross-cultural relevance for substances other than alcohol or tobacco, such as cannabis, amphetamines, cocaine and opiates.
The Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) was developed for the World Health Organization (WHO) by an international group of substance abuse researchers to detect and manage substance use and related problems in primary and general medical care settings. Primary health care professionals are well-positioned to provide interventions targeted to all substances irrespective of their legal status.
The ASSIST screening test version 3.0 is available in English and in 10 other languages (Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Portugüse, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian).
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This handbook is intended primarily for front-line health care providers who are likely to see children (among other clients) in their day-to-day practice. These may include general practitioners, n
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urses, midwives, gynaecologists,
paediatricians, mental health professionals, first responders and staff in emergency care.
Other professionals who may find it useful include social workers, those working in social welfare institutions, providers of psychosocial support, and those working in child care facilities and the education system.
Further, the content will benefit the work of policy-makers and managers to enable and support provision of clinical care to children experiencing, or who have experienced, child maltreatment.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has so far infected more than 30 million people in the world, having major impact on global health with collateral damage. In Mozambique, a public state of emergency was declared at the end of March 2020. This has limited peopl
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e's movements and reduced public services, leading to a decrease in the number of people accessing health care facilities. An implementation research project, The Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital, has been promoting access to maternal and child health care, in Natikiri, Nampula, for the last four years. Nampula has the second highest incidence of Covid-19. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions on access to maternal and child healthcare services. We compared health centres in Nampula city with healthcare centres in our research catchment area. We wanted to see if our previous research interventions have led to a more resilient response from the community.
METHODS: Mixed-methods research, descriptive, cross-sectional, retrospective, using a review of patient visit documentation. We compared maternal and child health care unit statistical indicators from March-May 2019 to the same time-period in 2020. We tested for significant changes in access to maternal and child health services, using KrushKall Wallis, One-way Anova and mean and standard deviation tests. We compared interviews with health professionals, traditional birth attendants and patients in the two areas. We gathered data from a comparable city health centre and the main city referral hospital. The Marrere health centre and Marrere General Hospital were the two Alert Community for a Prepared Hospital intervention sites.
RESULTS: Comparing 2019 quantitative maternal health services access indicators with those from 2020, showed decreases in most important indicators: family planning visits and elective C-sections dropped 28%; first antenatal visit occurring in the first trimester dropped 26%; hospital deliveries dropped a statistically significant 4% (p = 0.046), while home deliveries rose 74%; children vaccinated down 20%.
CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrated the negative collateral effects of Covid-19 pandemic Government restrictions, on access to maternal and child healthcare services, and highlighted the need to improve the health information system in Mozambique.
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Kangaroo mother care is a method of care of preterm infants. The method involves infants being carried, usually by the mother, with skin-to-skin contact. This guide is intended for
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health professionals responsible for the care of low-birth-weight and preterm infants. Designed to be adapted to local conditions, it provides guidance on how to organize services at the referral level and on what is needed to provide effective kangaroo mother care. The guide includes practical advice on when and how the kangaroo-mother-care method can best be applied.
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This handbook is an adaptation from the WHO Clinical Handbook Health care for women subjected to intimate partner violence or sexual violence developed by the World
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Health Organization (WHO), UN Women and United Nations Population Fund. The handbook draws on the work from professionals who are dedicated to preventing and responding to Gender Based Violence.
The Handbook guides health care service providers to provide comprehensive services to survivors of intimate partner violence and/or sexual violence. It also guides health professionals with respect to relevant stakeholders for referral purposes. The purpose is to ensure that relevant authorities are informed timeously in order act and ensure that those affected by violence receive speedy service as required.
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This report summarizes the latest scientific knowledge on the links between exposure to air pollution and adverse health effects in children. It is intended to inform and motivate individual and collective action by
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health care professionals to prevent damage to children’s health from exposure to air pollution.
Air pollution is a major environmental health threat. Exposure to fine particles in both the ambient environment and in the household causes about seven million premature deaths each year. Ambient air pollution alone imposes enormous costs on the global economy, amounting to more than US$ 5 trillion in total welfare losses in 2013.
This public health crisis is receiving more attention, but one critical aspect is often overlooked: how air pollution affects children in uniquely damaging ways. Recent data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that air pollution has a vast and terrible impact on child health and survival. Globally, 93% of all children live in environments with air pollution levels above the WHO guidelines (see the full report, Air pollution and child health: prescribing clean air. More than one in every four deaths of children under 5 years of age is directly or indirectly related to environmental risks. Both ambient air pollution and household air pollution contribute to respiratory tract infections that resulted in 543 000 deaths in children under the age of 5 years in 2016.
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Following the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution, Ukraine embarked on a national reform program to reduce widespread corruption within government. In the health sector, the government introduced several complementary reforms that aimed to improve the
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health outcomes of Ukrainian citizens, but designed in such a way that they would also reduce corruption. The reforms included reconfiguring primary care financing and essential medicines reimbursement under the newly formed National Health Service of Ukraine; raising the remuneration of health professionals; introducing a transparent, merit-based, process for medical university admissions; and initiating development of an eHealth digital records system.
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This document was designed to inform educators, amongst others, about enhancing the pre-service curriculum with mental health Gap Action Programme Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) materials, which can provide future
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professionals with the theoretical and clinical knowledge they need to provide mental health in non-specialized health care settings.
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The primary audience for these recommendations includes health professionals who are responsible for developing national and local health-
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care guidelines and protocols and health workers involved in the provision of care to women and their newborns during pregnancy, labour and childbirth; this includes midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners and obstetricians. The primary audience also includes managers of maternal and child health programmes, and relevant staff in ministries of health and educational and training institutions, in all settings.
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WHO Recommendations 2018 Update
The primary audience for these recommendations includes health professionals who are responsible for developing national and local
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health care guidelines and protocols (particularly those related to PPH prevention and treatment) and those involved in the provision of care to women and their newborns during labour and childbirth, including midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners and obstetricians, as well as managers of maternal and child health programmes, and relevant staff in ministries of health and training institutions, in all settings.
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The primary audience for these recommendations includes health professionals who are responsible for developing national and local health-
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care guidelines and protocols and health workers involved in the provision of care to women and their newborns during pregnancy, labour and childbirth; this includes midwives, nurses, general medical practitioners and obstetricians. The primary audience also includes managers of maternal and child health programmes, and relevant staff in ministries of health and educational and training institutions, in all settings.
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of highly contagious viruses (of the Ebola or Marburg type) in the context of an epidemic outbreak in West Africa