Week 1:
Core Content: Defining Health Systems
Health systems are described in different ways, as ‘particular healthcare system’ or ‘national healthcare systems’ - what aspects should be considered when defining a health system?
Service Delivery, Health Workforce, Leadership and Governance, Financing, Infromation Technology, Medical Products, Vaccine and Technology.
How would you define and explain the purpose of a health system?
A health system is made up of many components that have a common aim to provide preventative and treatment to people inflicted with a disease.
Cross-cutting Content: Teamwork
What is the difference between a group and a team?
A team is a unit of two or more people who regularly interact to accomplish common goals and who hold themselves mutually accountable for meeting performance results.
A group of people is not a team. Even though they might have a common goal, they do not interact regularly, and they are not accountable to each other for reaching the goal.
How does a group become a team?
A team implies a commitment to a shared objective and collective responsibility for achieving it. Therefore, to be a team and not a group there must be a common goal as well as all members invested in working towards achieving this goal with a sense of responsibility and accountability.
What are the different roles that people play within teams?
According to Belbin's Team Roles they are resource Investigator, Team worker, Co-ordinator, Plant, Monitor Evaluator, Specialist, Shaper, Implementer and Completer Finisher.
How can teams acknowledge and draw on the benefits of diversity?
Through an understanding of team dynamics which comes from team roles which are assigned based on intersecting personality traits, characteristics and motivations.
Complementary Content: History of Medicine
What is the difference between information and knowledge?
Information is everything that can be known about a topic. Knowledge is what amount an individual knows and can accurately recall.
What is the relationship between epistemology and ontology?
Epistemology is a field of science that tends to describe the many approaches we can choose to understand our world. It is by definition the science of knowledge, or the study of knowledge or knowing.
Ontology is about describing things and their relationships to answer the question "What is it?" while epistemology's personal concern is to investigate the ways that lead you to think that. Ontology is the study of “being.”
What is the difference between history and historiography?
History is what has happened in the past.
Historiography refers to the observation that historical accounts are always subjective and constructed to reflect causal linearity.
Week 2:
Core Content: Components of Health Systems
How does context, culture and environment affect the structure of health systems?
There are a number of external determinants that impact health systems. These include sociocultural factors such as the history of a country, its economic and political circumstances, and the legacy that these factors have on the way that health systems function. There are also a number of natural environmental factors such as the size of a country, the typography, climate, and population density, that affect the structure and function of a national healthcare system In addition to the socio-structural and cultural factors that impact a health system, one needs to account for users within a health system - their knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. These all affect how care is delivere and how people in the community accept care.
Considering a patient-centred approach to healthcare, how can health systems address the diverse social, economic, and familial circumstances of patients?
[I am struggling to answer this question]
Cross-cutting Content: Working in Teams
What common problems do teams encounter?
Absence of team identity, Difficulty making decisions, Poor Communication, An inability to resolve conflict, Lack of participation, Lack of Creativity, Groupthink, and Ineffective Leadership.
What can teams do to support a productive work culture?
Active listening, Communication, Dependability and Creativity.
What is problem solving and what steps do you take when solving a problem?
Step 1: Identify the problem
Step 2: Analyse the cause/s
Step 3: Generate potential solutions.
Step 4: Select and plan the best solution.
Step 5: Implement the solution.
Step 6: Evaluate the solution.
Complementary Content: History of Medicine
What impact has Hippocratic Medicine had on the practice of medicine today?
The Hippocratic Oath is the earliest expression of medical ethics in Western medicine and many of the principles remain significant to the practice of medicine today, such as patient confidentiality and non-maleficence. Some of the core aspects of Hippocratic Medicine are maintained within the Oath, such as the commitment to patient-centred care, the promotion of wellness and the prevention of disease, and the recognition that the environments in which we live are integral to our health.
What are the similarities and differences between the different health systems frameworks that you have learnt about on this course?
Patient-centred care, the promotion of wellness and the prevention of disease, and the recognition that the environments in which we live are integral to our health.
Week 3:
Core Content: Complex Adaptive Systems
What is the difference between complex and complicated systems?
A complex system comprises many parts, relationships between the variables that describe the sections that are nonlinear and have feedback but the overall behavior is unpredictable. Complicated systems are made up of many parts that work together to achieve a goal and are predictable.
What are the characteristics of a complex system?
Complex adaptive systems theory offers a particular description of systems that are or have:
Retrospective coherence
Non-linear
Unpredictable
Multi-level and nested
Open to the environment; to the past; and to the future
Emergent
How does ‘order’ manifest in different kinds of systems?
Chaotic systems do have order. The qualification is that the order is non-linear and cannot be predicted. Furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to observe the behaviour of the system, over time, to be able to identify its order.
What role does complexity and systems thinking play in understanding complex health issues such as the global management of disease outbreaks?
[I don't know how to answer this]
Cross-Cutting Content: Managing Conflict
How can conflict be positive?
Conflict often occurs in teams, especially during the storming phase of team development where the team is trying to establish its shared vision and group dynamics. During this time conflicting ideas, values and opinions may arise.
What is your approach to dealing with conflict?
Compromising, Accommodating, and Collaborating.
How would you avoid conflict?
By making sure that me and my team members have clear communiation.
Complementary Content: History of Medicine
What were the differences and the relationship between the medieval physician, surgeon, and apothecary?
A medieval physician has a college education, a surgeon amputates parts of people and an apothecary is like a pharmacist.
How did institutions such as the hospital and the university impact the practice of western medicine?
University have made the focus of medicine to be anatomy and also brought about the need for health professions to go to school before they are allowed to practice. The hospital has made medicine lack the person-centeredness that it used to have when physicians would visit people's homes.
Overall Module 1 Reflection:
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