What is clinical governance?
A system through which the NHS organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and high standards
What is the swiss cheese model of accident causation?
There are holes in the layers and if they line up it allows accidents to slip through
The more layers the less chance of hazards lining up, need to put safety measures in place to plug the holes
State maxwells dimensions of quality
What is an adverse event? Give examples of preventable and unpreventable adverse events
Adverse events are injury caused by management (not underlying disease) that prolongs hospitalisation, produces disability or both
Non preventable: side effects of chemotherapy
Preventable: wrong dose or medication given, some types of infections
What are some NHS quality improvement mechanisms?
What are some of the critiques of evidence based practice?
Why are some possible explanations as to why lower class is strongly associated with ill health? (as outlined in the black report)
What us the symptom iceberg?
Only a small proportion of illness actually gets presented to GPs
What are lay beliefs?
What is lay referral?
How people understand and make sense of health and illness
Lay referral is the chain of advice the sick person gets from other lay people prior to/ instead of seeking help from professionals
What are the principles of health promotion?
What are primary, secondary and tertiary health promotions?
Primary - aims to prevent onset of disease such as smoking cessation
Secondary - aims to detect and treat disease early such as screening
Tertiary - aims to minimise the effects of established disease such as renal transplantation
What is the sociological theory on chronic illness?
The work of chronic illness is
Why is it important to measure health?
What are the criteria screening?
Disease: must be an important problem, needs to be fully understood, detectable. detection must lead to benefit.
The Test: simple, safe, precise, valid
Treatment: effective treatment must be available, treatment must be advantageous
What are the critiques of screening?
What is sensitivity and specificity?
How are they calculated?
Sensitivity is the proportion of people with the disease who test positive - calculated by number of people with the disease who test positive / total people with the disease
Specificity is the proportion of people without the disease who test negative - calculated by number of people without the disease who tested negative / total people with no disease
What is positive predicted value?
How is it calculated?
The proportion of people who test positive who actually have the disease
Calculated by number of people who tested positive and have the disease / total number who tested positive
What is prevalence?
The total number who have the disease irrespective of how they test.
Total number of people with disease / total number of people
What is negative predicted value?
How is it calculated?
The proportion of people who test negative who actually dont have the disease
Calculated by the number of people who test negative and dont have the disease / total number who test negative
What are the issues with a false positive and false negative result?
False positive: go through the anxieties of testing when they dont actually have the disease, lower uptake in the future
False negative: the disease goes un-diagnosed, they are falsely reassured and may present late
What is lead time bias?
Screening programmes detect slow progressing disease best - early diagnosis falsely appears to prolong survival
Patients live the same amount of time but just know they have the disease for longer
What are the 3 core principles of the NHS?
Universal, comprehensive, free at point of entry
What are the 5 Ds of rationing in the NHS?
Deterrent - reduce demands via prescription charges
Delay - waiting lists modulate excess demands
Deflection - GPs deflect demand from secondary care
Dilution - fewer tests, cheaper drugs
Denial - reduce services eg IVF and sterilisation reversal
What are the principles for resource allocation?
Scarcity - some sacrifice is inevitable
Efficiency - need to get the most out of a resource
Equity - allocating on basis of need
Effectiveness - the extend to which a desired outcome is achieved
Utility - the value an individual item places of health state
Opportunity cost - once you have used a resource in one way you can no longer have it in another way