Essay Questions
3. Do health professionals’ beliefs affect health and illness?
Key Points:
- Consideration of the fact that while early research regarded health professionals as experts and assumed that doctors with similar levels of knowledge and training would act in similar ways, there is, in fact, considerable variability in different aspects of medical practice.
- Discuss the nature of clinical problems, i.e. how a health professional will select a different diagnosis according to the factors determining the illness.
- Health professionals have to take into account the probability of the disease.
- Discuss the seriousness of the disease, i.e. health professionals are motivated to consider the ‘pay-off’ in reaching a correct diagnosis, which is related to their beliefs about the seriousness and treatability of an illness.
- Consider the factors specific to each patient, e.g. medical history, degree of support at home.
- Discuss the role of stereotypes in the health professional's decision-making process.
- Examine how health professionals’ own health-related beliefs may be communicated to patients.
