Healthcare Sociology: Medicalization and Illness Construction

This assignment delves into the sociological concepts of medicalization and the social construction of illness. Students analyze readings on these topics, focusing on how social factors influence health perceptions, treatment decisions, and societal responses to disease. The assignment aims to help future healthcare professionals understand the complex interplay between medicine and society, encouraging a more holistic approach to patient care.

Running head: HEALTH CARE PRACTICES
HEALTHCARE PRACTICES AND ITS OVERVIEW
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Table for week 2..................................................................................................................3
Table for week 7..................................................................................................................6
Table for week 8..................................................................................................................9
Table for week 9................................................................................................................12

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Table for week 2
Student name:
Student ID:
Tutorial missed:
Theme for the week:
Lecture
Lecturer’s name:
The lecture talks about the definition of policy, its importance and its impacts on society. The
policy is a statement about an important issue that has to be controlled under any circumstances. The
policy defines a pathway or framework that is needed to achieve any goal or landmark of success. It
acts as a guiding frame of references and ensures uniformity and consistency with clarifying functions
and responsibilities. Policies also assist in performance of the strategy to establish its accountability.
Policies are of different types within which, public health policy is important as it deals with the
health of the community rather than the individual. For example the public health policy for Tobacco
reduction. This lecture also talks about institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. Stigma,
prejudice, shame, discrimination, stereotype and effect of these on the mental health is also been
discussed.

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Reading 1
This reading discusses about some of the definitions of policy. One of which defines the policy
as a process by which government defines its political vision and translates them into different
programs and actions to change the respective field. The modern health policy structure has been
discussed which is mainly driven due to the private-public partnership with an investment made by
philanthropic trusts. Further, the structure and functioning of the Australian health system has been
discussed which is based on the federal structure and depends on the public health policy.
To define the policies of Australian healthcare, four case studies has been presented in the
reading and the role of Australian Bureau of statistics (ABS) and Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare (AIHW) has been discussed. These case studies were on breast cancer screening, needle –
syringe programs, oral health and UN’s global health.
Reading 2
The reading two discusses about the chronic illness and the stigma associated with it. In recent
world, millions of people are suffering from chronic disorders, within which many may feel
stigmatized due to their chronic illness. Total 447 Upon accepting or denying the common presented
question, they were presented with a set of question to determine the other aspect of their disorder.
Within these, 184 students accepted that they were living with chronic illness. Internalized stigma was
measured based on The HIV stigma scale, however 6 more factors were added to it. Students had to

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answer within a scale of 5 (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and finally the obtained result was
obtained by averaging the 11 (5 from HIV scale and 6 from this scale) items.
Implications for MY future practice as a…
This reading 1 primarily focuses on the health policies of Australia and discuses different
aspects of it. With the help of four important case studies, the implication of these policies has been
mentioned in the reading that is going to help me for my future research aspects. On the other hand
reading 2 discuses about the stigma in chronic illness discuses interventions to remove these
prejudice, discrimination and stigma from the society against the people suffering from chronic
illness. The study from this reading is going to help me understand the stigma on a practical basis in
future.
Graded:
Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

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Table for week 7
Student name:
Student ID:
Tutorial missed:
Theme for the week:
Lecture
Lecturer’s name:
The lecture of week seven discusses about the indigenous and aboriginals of Australia and
discusses about their health complications and risk of acquiring diseases. The aboriginal population
is predominant in the south Australia and their health complications are different from that of the
indigenous population predominant in the remote area of north Australia. This lecture discusses
about the health risks that the aboriginals and indigenous population of Australia suffers. for
indigenous population, the mortality rate is double than that of the non-indigenous population and
they are always at a high health risk due to addiction to smoke, alcohol and many more. On the
other hand a research program is been discussed in which the researchers have planned to discuss
the problems and focuses on its solution.
Reading 1
The reading one of week, seven discusses about a project namely ‘managing two worlds
together’. The project is dedicated for the aboriginal patients from rural and remote south Australia

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and discusses about the needs and improvements that have to be done for the quality healthcare of
such people. This project has two stages in which the stage is focuses on the problem. The stage 1
discusses about four problems and reports were divided in six documents. These were- project
report, community summary, report on admission and costs, perspective of staff on the care,
experience of patients about the care and aboriginal patients journey. The second stage focuses on
the solution to this problems that consists of set of actions of research project. It focuses on the
improvement of the healthcare journey for aboriginals based on the existing healthcare practice.
Reading 2
Reading two discusses about the indigenous Australians and describes the key comparative
healthcare indicators for them. It also describes the key health risk exposures and explains the
importance of social determinants framework to understand the Australian indigenous people and
their need. The Australian indigenous people mostly live in the north Australia and maximum
population of them resides in the remote locations. According to the reading, the infant mortality
rate in indigenous people is approximately double than the non-indigenous people. It also discusses
about the health risk and states that these people are always at higher risk due to alcohol, smoking
and other addictions than the non-indigenous population. This lecture discusses about the reason of
high ESRD in this population and finds that due to high blood pressure, higher rate of diabetes, low
birth weight and obesity they are at health risk always.
Implications for MY future practice as a…

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The future implication of this study is also important, as it is important to understand the
health complications of aboriginals and indigenous people of Australia. The location and the history
of their population induces different factors that affects their health negatively. These readings
provide the factors that are the reason due to which these health complications occurs. Knowledge
of these factors will help me to provide such population with quality care in future.
Graded:
Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

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Table for week 8
Student name:
Student ID:
Tutorial missed:
Theme for the week:
Lecture
Lecturer’s name:
The lecture of week eight discusses about disability and its different aspects. The lecture discusses
about the effect of society on disability. At first, the lecture discusses about the effect of language on
the social health and what role health professionals has to perform when language emerges as a
barrier. disability is a social construct and does not has any proper definition as it completely depend
upon the influences of the society. It also discusses about the types of society and its effect on the
mental state of the disabled person.
Further, it discusses about the UNCRPD purpose of convention to promote and protect the equal right
to live and enjoy all the fundamental freedom a disabled person should get and the respect and
inherent dignity they deserve.
Reading 1
This reading discusses about the future improvement for the healthcare of people with

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disability and to facilitate it they carried out a systematic review. The researchers wanted to find out
that did the healthcare professions were the reason behind the stigmatized behavior of the patients
with disability or not. The conducted 30 studies and these studies were cross sectional self-report
studies of moderate quality. They assessed three dimensions of stigmatized attitude such as cognitive,
behavioral and affective dimensions. Further after researching about different interventions about the
healthcare of disabled people few interventions was found to be effective. The first intervention was
anti-stigma intervention for mainstream healthcare professional in which the professional will be
taught about the treatment procedure for the disabled. The second intervention was to find out the
facts that affects the mental health of the disabled and induces stigma. Third intervention is to monitor
the stigmatic behavior of healthcare professional to provide equal rights of treatment to disabled
people.
Reading 2
The second reading discuss about the attitude of healthcare professionals and its effect on the
fair evaluations and equalities in healthcare. Attitude defines the mentality of the person and in this
situation; a biasness prevails in spite of the social belief and intellectual thoughts. Therefore, it is
important for the professional to leave aside his intrinsic beliefs and provide the disabled person with
the healthcare he deserves. It is important to focus on the start of intervention rather than focusing on
the duration of the intervention. According to the reading, this attitude can be helpful to understand
the need of the patient. Finally, such interventions should be a part of the curriculum so that healthcare
professional gets proper time to internalize these equalities from commencement of their journey.

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Implications for MY future practice as a…
These readings are helpful for my future implications as these helped me toi understand the
positive attitude a healthcare professional should possess while providing healthcare to a disabled
patient. Disability is a social construct and therefore people never talks about it openly. they merely
think about the problems a disabled person goes through. However, at the time of implication, they
continue their intrinsic behavior, that induces stigma and discrimination in the head of disabled. the
reading one is going to help me with the interventions to understand the level of stigma, a patient is
going through and the reading two will help me to understand the positive attitude a healthcare
professional should bear.
Graded:
Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory

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Table for week 9
Student name:
Student ID:
Tutorial missed:
Theme for the week:
Lecture
Lecturer’s name:
The lecture of week 9 is completely based on concept of medicalization and social aspect of
healthcare. This is an important concept of sociological discussion of medicine. The author of the
paper wanted to reassess the role of this concept in the modern society and in the process describes the
archaeology of the concept and discusses its development and different ways through which it has
been used.
The lecture further discusses about the social construction of illness. This social
constructionism is a theoretical context that defines the cultural and historical aspects of different
phenomenon of illness. further it discusses the key findings and origin of constructionism.

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Reading 1
The concept of medicalization is widely used in the sociological terms and focuses on defining several
health implications because of social factors. It is a process of making medicines and the labels
healthy and ill relevant to human existence. While many of the health experts as well as sociologists
have found the concept of medicalization useful, many of them have found it critical. Few critics have
named this concept as irrelevant, other have marked it as its mistakes. However, the continuous use of
this term by sociologists, historians and physicians describes the importance of this concept in
identification, describing, understand, explain and question the medical activity. The reading also
provides arguments according to which, biomedicalization and pharmaceuticalization cannot be used
as an alternative for medicalization. This concept helps the physicians to view the disease with a
social aspect, however, the concept did not attack on the use of medicines in general.
Reading 2
Social construction of illness is one the major research topics in medical sociology nowadays pillars
of the construction. The first overarching finding demonstrates that some of the illness is comes with
social or cultural meanings and these illness are not derives from the nature directly. Therefore, this
aspect shapes the response of the society to this illness, as they are the only one who influences this in
the society. Second finding demonstrates that all chronic illness are constructed socially and this
construction happens at the experiential level. After that, it is on the individual to find the ways to

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understand the disease or find a way to live with it. Third factors states that nature does not provide
the knowledge about the disease and the knowledge is developed after some experience or research.
Therefore, this concept provides a different approach to the deterministic approaches of medicine and
help to make policies regarding the illness.
Implications for MY future practice as a…
These readings from week 9 is going to help me with the different approaches of healthcare and its
implications in modern day medicine. The concept of medicalization is going to help me with the
understanding of the social factor of illness. It will be useful to draw attention to different social
causes of illness. On the other hand, social constructionist approach is going to help with study of
different diseases with a perspective of sociological reason for it. This concept has several aspect for
research and therefore, understanding of it is going to help me for further understand about it in future.
Graded:
Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory