UK National Health Services Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

UK National Health Services - Essay Example The UK National Health Services has long delivered care and public health programmes through primary care. The community oriented primary care based on general practice populations and other health workers has debatably been able to make a significant headway against all odds mainly because of failure of primary care population failing to assume responsibility and proactive ownership of the process involved in improving the health of the population. The ideal would have been tailoring the primary care according to the local needs to a personalized care. Despite predominantly biomedical and humanist orientation, general practice in the United Kingdom has long been infused with knowledge and skills traditionally associated with public health medicine. The philosophy involves protecting, maintaining, and generating good health through a combination of individual and family assessments and provision of a supportive environment. This policy, to be able to be successful, demands closer working relationships between the public and the professional and the system acting as an integrating catalyst between the two and the policies building the ground rules for close collaboration and exchanges. The clinician in this framework has essentially dual responsibility in the sense that he needs to devise and implement anticipatory measures to reduce the risk of a future illness within the guidelines of the framework as well as to treat the disease in case of an incidence. Assuming the responsibility of both community and clinical function is painstaking since this calls for establishment of a new alliance between the health professionals and patient population to co-produce health in a joint venture. Unfortunately even though, this is sound theoretically, practically, the market-oriented reforms in the health services in an attempt to redefine and strengthen the discipline of health services did not help much to improv e the perceived the decline in the quality of care. This happened essentially due to a fault in the framework itself. The desired result and improvement was never achieved since the internal market within the service framework tended to separate the roles of health authorities and practitioners. The public health professionals sought to develop strategic planning and purchasing functions within the health authorities mainly to remain in control as they were, and in contrast, the fund holders dismissed the constraining disciplines of needs assessment and service evaluations (Majeed, A., 2003). Child Health Services: It is important to consider child health services in the framework. It is an important indicator for quality of care services. United Kingdom health services pay particular attention to the children in need. Children in need are defined as those who will be unable to achieve and maintain a reasonable standard of health or those whose health or development is likely to be significantly impaired or further impaired without services. This puts in place services for the children in need, for the children with disabilities, with family difficulties, and with poverty. Using school health as an example, the problems are known to be encountered liaising with the education