Health Care

Primary Health Care

Primary

health care
represents the basis of health
care in any country. It is the
first level at which an
individual gets in contact with
medical personnel.

 Primary

health care is organized in

different ways. Through primary health
care units , where the attending doctors
are usually general practitioners (GP), or
community health care centers, where
specialists can offer ambulatory
patients either treatment or
rehabilitation.

 The

other way of providing primary

health care is through a family doctor .
He/she treats a whole family and is well
acquainted with its health status,
genetic traits, but also its social or
economic status. Such an insight into
the patients status enables better
possibilities of prevention and
maintenance of health.

Hospitals
Hospital-

institution that provides a

broad range of medical services to sick,
injured, or pregnant patients. It employs
medical, nursing, and support staff to
provide inpatient care to people who
require close medical monitoring and
outpatient care to people who need
treatment but not constant medical
attention.

Hospitals

provide diagnosis and

medical treatment of physical and
mental health problems, surgery,
rehabilitation, health education
programs, but are also the basis for
nursing and physician training.

Patients can be admitted into a hospital in

two ways:
by means of arranged admission*
or through emergency admission.*

 According

to the services they provide,

hospitals are usually classified as
general or specialized. General
hospitals provide patients with a wide
range of services, including emergency
treatment in emergency units (ER),
surgery, and medical and nursing care.

 Specialized

hospitals concentrate
either on a particular group of patients
(e.g.. children), or a disease (e.g..
cancer). They provide state-of-the-art
treatments which are generally not
available in other hospitals, and also
conduct research on new drugs or
procedures.

Both

general and specialized

hospitals can be used as teaching
hospitals which offer practice to
medical students or train residents
(medical school graduates who are
doing postgraduate training).

 Academic

medical centers are usually

massive urban hospitals linked closely
with a major medical school. They can
also serve as referral* centers for
specialized consultation or for
advanced diagnostic and therapeutic
procedures for patients coming from a
wider region.

 In

some countries special nursing

homes are also a part of the National
Health System (NHS). They provide
palliative care to their patients
treatments that relieve the symptoms
but do not cure the disease thus
enabling their patients ( usually
terminally ill) to spend their lives in less
unpleasant conditions.

HOSPITAL DEPARTMENTS
Hospitals

are typically organized into

medical departments, or units, such as
the emergency unit, surgical suites,
intensive care units (ICUs), pediatric
and maternity wards, and
departments of radiology,
anesthesiology, pathology, and
rehabilitative medicine.

 The

Emergency Department is staffed

24 hours and used for stabilizing a
patients/ victims condition. Its the
busiest place in a hospital, frequently
crowded with patients so the staff has to
perform a triage identify and respond
immediately to the most seriously
ill/injured patients.

 Surgical

suites include operating

rooms (theaters) and postoperative
recovery rooms. These intensive care
units use monitoring equipment that
transmits data on a patients condition
directly to the nurses station, thus
enabling immediate reaction of the
medical staff in charge.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

Health

system reforms are focusing, more and

more, on: the role of hospitals, restructuring
services, decentralizing hospital
management, increasing the integration of
hospitals into the health system and
improving the performance of hospitals.
All this is being done in order to: provide
better and more efficient health care for
more patients at a smaller price.

There is a tendency to:

have a fewer number of hospital beds which
are used more intensively because the
average length of stay is shortened.
increase the number of day-care
interventions, i.e. high technology and new
pharmaceutical treatments have made it
possible to treat patients without hospital
admission.

 merge

several hospitals under one

management structure.
transform hospitals into self-governing
units or public trusts.
increase the private-sector health care
provision which is now competing with
the public-sector hospitals.

 improve

performance in hospitals
through clinical quality control, clinical
audit and through financial incentives.

HOSPITAL STAFF

Hospital

Medical Director

Hospital Manager/ Chief
Administrator

Consultant

 Admitting

Physician

Attending Physician

Visiting Physician
-
Recommending Physician

 Department

Head

Director of Nursing Services

Head Nurse

Theatre Sister

Ward

Sister

Technician/ Charge Nurse

Orderly/ Assistant

Nurse Practitioner

 Ambulance

Emergency Ward/ Department/ Room

Coronary Care Unit

Day Care* Center

Emergency

Unit

Teaching Hospital

Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

Maternity

Ward

Delivery Room/ Suite

Operating Theatre/Room

 Recovery

Room

Surgery

Waiting Room

Ward

 Outpatient

Clinic/ Facility/ Department

a
Visiting

Hours

Ward Rounds/ Rounds

To be on call

To be on duty