Introduction
The processes of life were being born, growing old, having illness, and death. In our life, we suffered from different sickness. It was a good reason for the absent from school, work or other daily working activities. However, in the view of a sociologist, the people who were in the sick role, they were regarded as having committed a crime and it was treated as deviant behavior (Peter & Meredith, 1998). In the structural functional model, people took various tasks and role in society or in different institutions. These were dependable with the structures and norms of the society. Did sickness have any effective elements in society? This paper would describe the concept of sick role and the application in the nursing practice (Parson, 1979).
Concept of sick role
Talcott Parsons (1902 – 1979) was a famous American sociologist and a structural functionalist. He developed a general theoretical system for analyzing the society. In his theoretical system, people hold their status and perform their role in the society, which was called social role. In his concept, the social roles were expected behaviors (including rights and obligations) of everyone with a given position in society (Diligio, 2005). This kind of social role maintained the structural and functional status of the society. I used Mr. Lee as an example to illustrate about the social roles. Mr. Lee was a registered nurse. He lived with his wife and his daughter. According to the Parsons’s theoretical system, Mr. Lee has three social roles. At hospital, he took a role as a nurse. He cared his patients. At home, he took a role as husband to his wife and a role as father to his daughter.
The sick role was first defined by Talcott Parsons (1951) in his seminal work which was describing a set of behaviors. These behaviors were associated with people who became acutely ill. As described by Parsons, the sick role was a process in which an individual experiences a change in role identity or role expectations. As a result, people were suffered from the illness. Base of the Parsons, there were some components in the sick role. Firstly, the illness was involuntary. Secondly, residents of the sick role were exempted from their usual work; family, civic and permits to be “take care of” by health care professionals and others.
An analysis of the psychological constructs of the various stages of health in Fatima's life, a single mother and 50-hour weeks worker that developed hypertension. Using the Psychology of Health and Illness as the main point, comparing the biomedical model and health psychology. Even though according to Ogden (ano) a biomedical model regards, Fatima illness is beyond her control and she is only a victim of some external force that invades the body and caused physical change or is originated as an internal physical change. (Ogden, ano, p.5). Fatima health and illness is a psychological construction of her habits and behaviors also of her social environment.
During 1951 Parson was the first to debate about the sick role. According to Parson, there are the few expectations which need to be met before considering individual sick. Firstly, individual should not cause their own health problem an example could be by eating a high-fat food which leads to overweight and linked to type 2 diabetes. An individual receives a less sympathy. Secondly, individual who is sick must adamant to get well otherwise will see as faking the illness. Thirdly, an individual illness should be confirmed by a physician so they can follow the instruction. The relationship between the physician and the patient is hierarchical where the instruction is provided by the physician and followed by the
In this regard, the paper will be bridging the mind-body divide and explain the relation of the body, by ascertaining that the body of the patient that is suffering from chronic illness is communicating both to the person and the world that
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
Functionalists believe that society is a structure that functions via interrelating parts, each with its own role. If an individual is sick then they become a deviant to the structure that is society. Deviant means that it is not the norm and does not fit in with society. To get around this the functionalist perspective uses the sick role. An individual can take on the sick role in order to be excused from their usual duties until they are well-enough to resume them.
A patient and client are one in the same in the present nursing profession. A client is first and foremost more than a name on a chart or a number in the system. They are a person with thoughts, words, deeds, and a need for care. To truly embody what a client is one needs to combine definitions. A client is a person seeking professional and protective medical care with a need for concern, understanding, and top quality of care. Health and illness are two sides of a coin. Some may view health as the absence of illness and alternatively, illness as the lack of good health. However, each goes beyond being the simple opposite of the other. Health is not just the absence of illness but the embodiment of well-being, comfort, and wellness of body, mind and spirit. Illness can be as simple as a cold, a bodily injury, and on to a disease of the mind. Both health and illness can be simply defined but to truly understand what it is to be healthy and to be ill one must look beyond the simple and see all the aspects of each.
Health as a Social Construction In my essay, I aim to find out why social construction affects the health of our society. Ill health may be defined as 'a bodily or mental state that is deemed undesirable'. This means that health is the condition of the body both physically and mentally. Social construction of health refers to the way health varies from one society to another.
Nursing practice has revolutionized itself throughout the years. Today we realize the causes of current illnesses as complex and multifaceted (source). In past models, for instance the medical model, the approach was straightforward and neglected the patients active involvement in their care; the patient was viewed as the passive recipient and the doctor, an active agent that “fixed” their patients. ( source). New developed models since then, such as the biopsychosocial model, show us that care focuses on many factors. The model demonstrates understanding of how suffering, disease, and illness can be associated by many factors seen at the different levels in society and the medical sciences (source). Caring for each component is important to the healing process.
By the 1980s, Marxism, the economics forces define the political and cultural realities in society, mixed with feminism claimed “that gender is not class but a driving force of history.” This created the notion that “when women are subordinate men benefit” and that women had a disadvantage to men in the workforce (Conley 2013). Marxist feminist would called this gender conflict. The nuclear family has gender roles which are “set of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as a male or female.Gender roles is more general term,but Parson’s sex roles is more of an ambiguous term. Sex roles theory states that men are work oriented, while women are domestic oriented to form the ideal nuclear family. “Sex roles created by society was formed for structuralism functionalism, which is the theoretical tradition claiming that every society has certain structures that exist in order to fulfill some set of necessary functions(2013). Even though functionalist supported this theory in the 1960s, it was flawed. Sex role theory only provided one way of how a family could function. Essentialist would describe Parson’s theory as the social phenomena of the nuclear family based on the biological factor of sex. R.W. Connell described the condition in which men are dominant and privileged and that it is invisible, which is Hegemonic masculinity. Even though hegemonic masculinity is what some theorist impose, it clarifies
The biopsychosocial model (BPS) is a framework used to systematically consider the interactions between biological, psychological and social influences on human functioning, in the context of a person’s disease or illness (Boundless Psychology, 2016). This integrated approach suggests that health and sickness overlap and can be best understood by looking at the multiple combinations of these influences and how they interact and affect a person’s health and wellbeing (Wade, 2009). This assignment will aim to discuss the BPS model, describe the different perspectives within the theory and demonstrate how they apply to patient care. In order to do this, a case study of a person with a chronic health condition will be introduced and the factors
This also requires the person to be socially and economically productive in order to be seen as healthy. According to Mildred Blaxter (1990), there are different ways of defining health. Furthermore, disease can be seen as the presence of an abnormality in part of the body or where there is a harmful physical change in the body such as broken bones. So, illness is the physical state of disease, that is to say, the symptoms that a person feels because of the disease. However, there is some limitation of these definitions which is not merely an absence of disease but a state of physical, mental, spiritual and social wellbeing.
One of the goals of nursing is to respect the human rights, values and costumes of a patient and his or her family and with the community as a whole. The International Council of Nurses states that nursing practice can be defined generally as a dynamic, caring, helping relationship in which the nurse assists the client to achieve and maintain optimal health. As health care providers, we have some fundamental responsibilities such as to promote health, to prevent illnes...
The human becoming theory posits quality of life from each person's own perspective as the goal of nursing practice. It is a human science theory that views individuals as an open, unitary and free-willed beings that co-creates their health and interact with their environments. The human becoming theory views nursing as a basic science with a unique knowledge base. Parse defined unitary as the indivisible, unpredictable and ever-changing part of human that makes choices while living a paradoxical pattern of becoming in mutual process with the universe (Parse, 2004). Health is living one’s own chosen values; it is the quality of life experienced and described by the person and it cannot be given, guarded, manipulated, judged or diagnosed. It is a process of becoming that is unfolding and cannot be prescribed or described by societal norms but by the individual living t...
Black defines health as “an individual’s physical, mental, spiritual, and social well-being; a continuum, not a constant state” (Black, 2017, p. 338). Benner goes on to say that well-being and being ill are recognized as different ways of being in the world with health described as not just the absence of disease and illness (1982). Yet each affects the other, and personal definitions of health vary greatly among individuals, society, and healthcare professionals.
The concept of social pathology applies the medical metaphor of pathology to describe and explain social problems. From this perspective those individuals and groups who deviate from social norms, or institutions that do not fit with core social norms, are “sick” or pathologic and a risk to the society's “health.” Social