Abstract

ORUETA SANCHEZ, Ramón et al. Medicalisation of every-day life (II). Rev Clin Med Fam [online]. 2011, vol.4, n.3, pp.211-218. ISSN 2386-8201.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S1699-695X2011000300005.

Medicalisation of every-day life is one of the problems currently contributing to the massification of visits to Doctors' surgeries or Hospital Emergency Departments, thus making it difficult to provide high quality healthcare and causing frustration for many health professionals. Medicalisation is understood as being the process of turning normal human conditions into medical conditions or diseases and trying to resolve them through medicines. Such conditions are not medical, but social or professional conditions or issues related to interpersonal relationships. Health professionals are both the actors and the victims of this process. The main consequences of medicalisation are: transforming healthy persons into patients, increasing iatrogenic harm and the consumption of healthcare resources and loss of efficacy and efficiency of the same. Amongst the recommended actions we emphasise those directed towards regulating the expectations of the population, restricting the field of action of medicine, encouraging self-care and acting according to current healthcare evidence.

Keywords : Health Services Misuse; Unnecessary Procedures; Attitude to Health.

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