Clinical Communication in the Aspect of Development of New Technologies and E-Health in the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Patient-clinician communication presents the views of several national authorities on the principles and expectations of shared decision-making between patients and their healthcare providers, including doctors, and nurses and oncology nurses. In this chapter authors focus on the communication challenges facing doctors who trained in medical environment in Poland, in order to prepare communications training designed specifically for doctors and to illustrate how a close analysis of professional discourse can be transferred to work environments beyond the medical world. Authors draw attention to clinical roles performed by medical staff practicing locally and trained doctors.

Emerging Role of Technology in Health Education for Youth

The Information Technology (IT) produces significant impact on the emotional and social health of young people. It is obvious that IT is playing an increasingly important part in people's lives. This chapter reviews the current state of youth health and the role of digital landscapes in health education of youth. The chapter also provides insight into how youth, particularly youth of color, use technology to learn, communicate, and discuss various health-related issues. Specific technology needs and usage patterns are identified and success of various initiatives of use of technology for health educations is assessed. Various implications and recommendations are provided for optimizing technology use in young people health education.

A Follow up to Semi-Automatic Systems for Exchanging Health Information

The present research is an attempt to explore the applicability of the best possible service in the area of organized health care services, at fixed predefined points of service. The suggestion is that there should be a system that will receive and provide information about health matters of general public concern. Thus following the lead of Citizen Service Centers in Greece, it can be extended conveniently to mobile devices. The main survey was conducted on a sample of Municipalities and Citizens in the year 2013. The results indicate that the new proposed system could be more secure for citizens for future use, based on supervising procedure by proper employee who will provide more help to the users, instead of a fully automatic system.

Toward an Informed-Patient Approach to E-Health Services

With the expanding utilization of digital and technological media by public health providers and healthcare consumers, there is a need to evaluate the patients' role. There is good evidence of the growing acceptability of the Internet in seeking health information. This paper aims to evaluate the patients' role as an informed-patient. This role, albeit, with its limitations, affects the ways by which people consume health, consult their doctors and also influence health policy. This paper is a sociological and anthropological analysis of the effect of e-health services on the informed-patients' role and their ability to bring about social change through the Internet and their use of e-healthcare services. Through analyzing current literature and examples of health-related websites, this analysis focuses on informed-patients and how they are able to demand better health services for themselves and for their communities.

A Systems Approach for Sustainably Reducing Childhood Diarrheal Deaths in Developing Countries

Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death and is the major cause of malnutrition in children under age 5 worldwide. More than 50 percent of the cases occur in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Open defecation, substandard fecal disposal systems, and contaminated water supplies are the typical causes of diarrheal diseases. This public health crisis in low income countries mirrors the experiences of today's industrialized nations two centuries ago. The lessons learned from their sanitary evolution can be instructive in charting a sustainable path towards saving the lives of almost 2 million children annually. In this chapter a case study of Cuba's sanitary reformation is also presented to showcase successes, similar to those of developed countries, within a developing country and economically challenging context.

The Idea of Human Rights in Conditions of Hospital Treatment

The aim of this chapter is describing of the influence of universal human rights and civil liberties on the formation of standards for hospital care. The authors present definition of the right to life and the right to health. Moreover in the section it is discussed modern standards of hospital treatment under the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality. The authors discuss in detail about selected examples realization of human rights in the treatment of hospital and forms of their violation. During the presentation of these issues, the authors analyze a provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and use a number of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights issued in matters concerning human rights abuses in the course of treatment and hospitalization.

When the System Fails

Guided by the lens of psychodynamic theory, Ford (2015) investigated the challenges faced by adoptive families of traumatized children. Fifteen families were randomly selected to participate in this study from a group of 30 parents who adopted traumatized children in Arizona. Thematic categories were drawn and summarized. Textual descriptions evolved from the thematic groups acknowledging their experiences and how these lived experiences guided their decision to adopt a traumatized child. Verification techniques, data mining, journaling, clustering, brainstorming, and peer reviews were used to ensure the quality of data. Emergent themes emphasized the need for adoption-focused training specific to traumatized children. Ford's (2015) study revealed that these adoptive families desired to be equipped with specialized therapeutic training before and after their adoptions.

Organizational Leadership and Health Care Reform

Policies, health, and government regulations affect various Health Care organizations and their members. One such policy, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, attempts to improve the performance of health care systems through the use of technology, such as Electronic Health Records (Bluementhal, 2010). The most critical task of leadership is to establish a mindset at the top of the organization and function to infuse a culture of excellence throughout the organization (Bentkover, 2012). Health organizations can only progress if their members share a set of values and are single-mindedly committed to achieving openly defined objectives (Bentkover, 2012). This chapter investigates organizational leadership in relation to health care reforms to include trends in health care leadership, Stratified Systems Theory (SST), Systems Thinking, and regulators perspectives. The chapter will consist of the following sections: background; issues controversies, and problems; solutions and recommendation; future research directions; and conclusion.

The Role of Average Health Status

Economic, social and environmental policies, programs and projects have impact on health. Health in All Policies (HiAP) aims to improve population health by taking into account these impacts. HiAP needs appropriate tools for assessing impacts on population health. When making choices between policy options, decision-makers rely on predictions from Health Impact Assessment. Currently there is no gold standard for establishing and assessing validity of predictions. This paper distinguishes between two levels of causal pathways regarding health impacts – specific and conditional, and proposes the Average Health Status – Health Inequalities Matrix as gold standard. The Matrix facilitates making the right choices at any level and local context, thus is useful for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners for designing, analysing and evaluating all kinds of policies. By allowing quick, reliable and inexpensive appraisal of different policy options the matrix makes feasible taking into account the impacts on population health and paves the way for institutionalizing of HiAP.

Hunting HIV-Positive Women in Greece as Parasites

In this chapter, the authors discuss public policies of stigmatization and fascitization. In Greece, HIV-positive women have been imprisoned while their personal data have been published in newspapers and the social media aiming to inform citizens and to protect public health.