Can generalism help revive the primary healthcare vision?

Published Date: 03rd October 2011

Publication Authors: Irving G

Extract
It is more than 30 years since the World Health Organization (WHO) called for a paradigm-shift to a model of primary healthcare: a vision of creating ‘Health for All’ through ‘putting people at the centre of health care’.1 Since then, we have seen significant advances in health and healthcare. People are ‘healthier, wealthier and liver longer today than 30 years ago’.2 Economic growth, increased resources, and rapid expansion of scientific knowledge and technological advancement have all contributed.2 But we see growing concerns that the primary healthcare vision is being lost, with a worrying impact on our current systems of healthcare.2 The burden of care on individual patients is increasing.3 An excessive focus on disease, fragmentation of care and unregulated commercialization2 has been linked to inefficiency, ineffectiveness and inequity.4 All against a background of changing health needs, notably a rise in the burden of chronic, complex illness.2,5 WHO calls for a revival and strengthening of the primary healthcare vision to meet modern needs, refocusing health services around people.2 Generalism describes an approach to care which is person-, not disease-focused; continuous, not episodic; integrates biotechnical and biographical understanding of illness; and promotes health as a resource for living, and not an end in itself.6 So can generalism help revive the primary healthcare vision?

Reeve, J; Irving, G; Dowrick, CF. (2011). Can generalism help revive the primary healthcare vision?. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 104 (10), 395-400

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