No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
How Do We Address Human Needs and Wants in Health Care?
Abstract
Background and Context As human beings, we all have things we both need and want. As patients, we regularly present pro-fessionals with a plethora of needs and wants. One constant refrain about health care is that resources are limited. Within this context of resource allocation, health professionals must make difficult deci-sions about how to distinguish between and respond to human needs and wants. While working with a palliative care team in London, questions about whether or not health profes-sionals can and do make distinctions between human needs and wants were raised. This prompted research into the theory and practice of distinguishing needs from wants. One aim was to provide a more consistent means of weighing up and making decisions between needs and wants for profession-als. Such distinctions may also be helpful to Christians in the wider context of work and life. What do we mean by 'health'? Fundamental to all interactions within health care is an understanding of what we mean by health. There is a key distinction between the basis of health and the basis for health. The basis of health relates to the moral base for health and what makes health a value. The basis for health focuses on what is needed to bring about or produce this value of health, which may entail both curative and preventative interventions.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Prefaces - Introduction - PART I RELATIVISM AND THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN NEED - Who Needs Human Needs? - The Inevitability of Human Needs - The Grammar of Human Needs - PART 2 A THEORY OF HUMAN NEED - The Basic Needs of Persons - Societal Preconditions for Need Satisfaction - Human Liberation and the Right to Optimal Need Satisfaction - Optimising Need Satisfaction in Theory - PART 3 HUMAN NEEDS IN PRACTICE - Measuring Need Satisfaction - Health and Autonomy - Intermediate Needs - Societal Preconditions for Optimising Need Satisfaction - Charting Human Welfare - PART 4 THE POLITICS OF HUMAN NEED - Towards a Political Economy of Need Satisfaction - The Dual Strategy
Palliative care professionals have begun to address the issues surrounding the provision of palliative care to non-cancer patients. Yet the situation remains inconsistent and morally unjustifiable. The duty to provide care, non-maleficence, beneficence, protecting the patient's best interests and respecting patient autonomy are key responsibilities which palliative care professionals have for all their patients, regardless of their diagnosis. On the grounds of justice as fairness, equality and equity, the current inconsistencies in the provision of palliative care to non-cancer patients are unfair unequal and inequitable. Professionals can no longer ignore their moral responsibility to address these issues and change their practice to include the provision of care for dying patients regardless of their diagnoses.
Early Detection of Health Impairment in Occupational Exposure to Health Hazards
World Health Organization (1975). Technical Report Series 571. Early Detection of Health Impairment in
Occupational Exposure to Health Hazards. Geneva: WHO.
Social Justice and Equal Access to Health Care,' in On Moral Medicine: theological perspectives in medical ethics
- Gene Outka
Gene Outka (1987). 'Social Justice and Equal Access to Health Care,' in On Moral Medicine: theological
perspectives in medical ethics. S E Lammers and A Verhey, eds. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 637-38.
Note: My thanks are extended to Help the Hospices for funding this research and to David Cook and Rob George for their critical input along the way
- Outka
Outka, 639.
Note: My thanks are extended to Help the Hospices for funding this research and to David
Cook and Rob George for their critical input along the way.