health and social care AVCE act 6 unit 5
...seventy-five years old. After you reach that limit you are no longer entitled to the treatment and may not be called in for the tests, even though forty percent of breast cancer is in women over seventy-five. Basically this means that my organization may rather spend the time and money on someone who is thirty-five years old and help prolong their life. Another example is smear testing. My organization only plans smear testing for patients between twenty and sixty-four. Patients over sixty-four would not be called back for another smear test if they have had three negative results when they had been between the testing ages. Again, my organization may rather spend the time and resources on a younger patient. Sexism- sexism is a set of attitudes or behavior towards people or individuals that judge on the basis of gender this is what we call sexual discrimination. Woman may be treated differently in my organization, as the medical profession is mostly male dominated. Some male doctors may judge females based on there own male perceptions as woman are not always taken seriously and are often seen by men as the weaker sex and are more likely to complain than men. Doctors make judgments because woman on average do tend to visit there doctor more. For example they take their children to see the doctor when they are not well. Also women tend to worry more. My organization should try to treat everybody equally. Racism- Racism is seeing or treating another person differently or unequally. Racists often focus on people of different cultures who are visibly different like Black or Asian people. My organization should make sure that the colour of skin or the patient’s appearance should not matter and that everyone is given the best treatment available. This is sometimes not the case as patients may be racially discriminated against in the NHS. For example Ingrid Nicholls a black lady of forty-six had to have her leg amputated after a childhood hip infection. She was told by a doctor that if she wanted a prosthetic limb to match her skin colour she would have to buy one privately. This would have cost her three thousand pounds. Her local health authority then told her that they did not fund black prosthesis and she would have to pay. This is racism, as my organization should have taken into consideration all aspects of prosthesis. My organization should meet the diverse needs of different ethnic groups. It should also make sure it does not use institutional racism towards any of their patients. My organization needs to look at demographic charts of the local area so that they can develop services around them. My organization should also make sure that there are no communication barriers that could be considered racist. They can do this by having interpreters, leaflets and audio tapes for all the different languages that appear in the demographic charts. My organization should also support any patients who are being racially abused or discriminated against. For example they could enforce a zero tolerance policy. This would include staff and patients. If either felt they were being treated differently then they should inform a member of staff with the authority to take action. If there is not enough funding in my organization this may become a barrier because the patients will not receive the care that they would of done if there was enough funding. Lack of funding will also mean a staff shortage and the organization may be more at risk to poor infection such as respiratory diseases get out of control. The service would then lead to poor quality health care and the patients would not receive the quality of care they need. Without doctors and nurses patients can’t be treated. Without funding my organization would not be fully equipped with all the latest and up to date technology and this would create a barrier to the patient’s health care. My organization could put funding into disadvantaged services like the elderly ward. The elderly ward is deprived off beds, equipment, staff and drugs. The introduction of new technology is very costly. Sometimes there may be signs of ageism on the ward. For example a doctor may pay more attention to a younger patient rather than an elderly patient because a younger patient may be seen as a higher priority. From doing my research I have found out that according to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1491805.stm the government is unveiling its plans for hundreds of outdated hospital wards for the elderly are to be modernized at the cost of £40 million. I think the governments have done this to provide the best environment for care, with more privacy and peace to all the elderly patients. I am now going to write about how to over come physical barriers that may arise. There may be physical barriers that patients may come across for example if an elderly person has had a stroke they may find it hard to gain access to my organization as they may be paralyzed down one side or unable to get transport so my organization should provide a bus. Physical barriers related to my organization may be that there is not enough access for disabled people or people already inside the hospital with injuries such as fractured limbs. How is a patient with a broken leg meant to climb a flight of stairs? If a patient were in a wheel chair they would not be able to climb a set of stairs. The stairs should have a handrail or a ramp up the side of the staircase. So this is creating a barrier to my organization for the disabled. All doors in my organization must be accessible to wheel chair users especially fire exits, and some doors must be automatic because patients may struggle to open the doors them self’s. Also if there are not enough ramps available then patients may not be able to get to where they need to be. If there were not a car park it would have created a huge barrier and could cause accidents and may cause difficulty for the paramedics, as there...