Stigmatization of major illnesses and diseases in today’s society provides barriers for individuals and their overall health and health literacy. Stigmatization leads to many complications with people living with certain disabilities in the workforce and provides limitations with social life. In regards to health care, it is important to study stigmas in order to diminish certain ones that exist in our society. Overcoming stigmas in the health field can help to increase preventative measures and treatment efforts. Discrimination and stigmas often go hand in hand in how they create barriers to care and health equity. These barriers often go unseen or become neglected. It is important for healthcare professionals to look past the biomedical model
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I chose a governmental website in order to look at HIV/AIDS through a biomedical standpoint. This website provides the basic facts in regards to HIV/AIDS, treatment options, reducing risks, potential health related problems, and other biomedical criteria. In addition to this viewpoint, the website involves methods of coping for patients as well as friends and family, legal rights, and discrimination. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is defined as a communicable disease that is transmitted through human to human contact of bodily fluids. HIV attacks the immune system and targets the body’s T cells which results in the body’s difficulty in fighting infections. If left untreated, HIV will develop into AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). AIDS is the final stage of the HIV infection although with proper intervention, not everyone who has HIV advances to this stage. The immune systems of AIDS victims are in critical condition, making them very susceptible to other infections. Without treatment, people who are diagnosed with AIDS typically survive about 3 years due to complications of the disease (AIDS.Gov, …show more content…
Encouraging and empowering all members of society to get tested is also crucial to effective prevention, treatment, and stigma reduction. AIDS-related stigma is formed in social environments. Creating an effective knowledge about transmission and correcting the socio-cultural beliefs of health providers are two key strategies to addressing the problem (Zarei, Joulaei, Darabi, Fararouei, 2015). Furthermore, patients are most likely going to internalize the stigmatized attitude in them. It is important for health care professionals to attend to a patient’s psychological needs as well as biological needs. Including subjective language in addition to the medical objective jargon during patient encounters will help reduce the strict biomedical stance on the illness. In addition to this, modified attitudes toward AIDS patients can lead to improved health services to them. This can be solved by including education during training for healthcare professionals on the health implications of the stigma and how they can address them in a professional setting. It may be beneficial to create scenarios during healthcare training that depict interaction with an HIV/AIDS patient. As stated previously, another solution would be the incorporation of cross-disciplinary perspectives to foster a shared understanding of the broader policies needed to see the end
I chose a governmental website in order to look at HIV/AIDS through a biomedical standpoint. This website provides the basic facts in regards to HIV/AIDS, treatment options, reducing risks, potential health related problems, and other biomedical criteria. In addition to this viewpoint, the website involves methods of coping for patients as well as friends and family, legal rights, and discrimination. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is defined as a communicable disease that is transmitted through human to human contact of bodily fluids. HIV attacks the immune system and targets the body’s T cells which results in the body’s difficulty in fighting infections. If left untreated, HIV will develop into AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). AIDS is the final stage of the HIV infection although with proper intervention, not everyone who has HIV advances to this stage. The immune systems of AIDS victims are in critical condition, making them very susceptible to other infections. Without treatment, people who are diagnosed with AIDS typically survive about 3 years due to complications of the disease (AIDS.Gov, …show more content…
Encouraging and empowering all members of society to get tested is also crucial to effective prevention, treatment, and stigma reduction. AIDS-related stigma is formed in social environments. Creating an effective knowledge about transmission and correcting the socio-cultural beliefs of health providers are two key strategies to addressing the problem (Zarei, Joulaei, Darabi, Fararouei, 2015). Furthermore, patients are most likely going to internalize the stigmatized attitude in them. It is important for health care professionals to attend to a patient’s psychological needs as well as biological needs. Including subjective language in addition to the medical objective jargon during patient encounters will help reduce the strict biomedical stance on the illness. In addition to this, modified attitudes toward AIDS patients can lead to improved health services to them. This can be solved by including education during training for healthcare professionals on the health implications of the stigma and how they can address them in a professional setting. It may be beneficial to create scenarios during healthcare training that depict interaction with an HIV/AIDS patient. As stated previously, another solution would be the incorporation of cross-disciplinary perspectives to foster a shared understanding of the broader policies needed to see the end