ILLNESS AND HEALING

Illness and Healing

Illness and Healing

What does the concept of health promotion imply? What does it say about our understanding of health and illness? How are these ideas connected to our obsessive concern with body image?

The Concept of Health Promotion

Over the years, the healthcare sector has become increasingly concerned with improving healthcare quality, and performance efficiency and effectiveness through structural reforms, financial considerations, procedural reforms, cultural change, etc. Longenecker and Brown suggest that to accelerate and sustain this promotion, systematic management-development efforts must be demonstrated at the organizational level. This, however, burdens the concerned authorities who function within the health care systems (Henderson & Peterson, 2005, pp. 263 - 273). Ubeda and Santos note that competence-based management is needed under these circumstances. This requires the development of human competences through efficient staff selection, performance appraisals, career management, and other motivational practices that allow the entire staff to develop and assimilate their skills, knowledge, and behaviors to assure the efficiency of the services provided while ensuring their ease of accessibility (Bunton, Baldwin, Flynn & Whitelaw, 2000, pp. 55 - 70).

The quality of the health care and the care given to patients are one of the most significant issues in the health care system. The increasing demand for the high quality health care and the vision of the health institutes to provide high quality health care has lead to health promotion and s in the methods of the health care with many respects. In this regard, the hospitals and clinics are undergoing several transformations within their health care systems with various aspects such as changes in structures, staffing, training, tactics and other related areas in order to evaluate and to provide a good quality health care to the citizens (Lhussier & Carr, 2008, pp. 299 - 309).

In the current era, the healthcare sector is persistently involved in improving the healthcare quality and performance efficiency along with the enhancement of effectiveness with the effective implementation of reforms and changes at various levels of this entire system. In this regard, the achievement of early wins and small changes encourages further persistence. Knowing teams that were at the same stage at the beginning, and seeing those teams achieve improvement, acts as a stimulus to others (Ayo, 2012, pp. 99 - 105). Enthusiasts become the advocates, and all successful participants become recruiters by default through positive conversations they have with nonparticipants in the same or other organizations. The enthusiasm and energy created by a well-constructed and well-delivered large-scale health promotion program is difficult to describe, but it is the fuel that drives the entire scale of health promotion (Bunton, Baldwin, Flynn & Whitelaw, 2000, pp. 55 - 70).

Engaging and driving health promotion through the front line and allowing headroom for innovation (and ensuring that innovation is captured as part of a dynamic within this process), when combined with the overall direction, incentive, and commitment from leaders, offers the best chance of sustainability. This does not occur by default but rather by efficiently planned ...