Preventive medicine is the practice of promoting preventive medical care to improve patient well-being. The ultimate goal is to prevent diseases, disabilities,. A preventive medicine doctor is a doctor who has experience in public health and clinical care. This allows them to provide information and expertise in preventing injuries, illnesses and deaths.
Preventive medicine is an interdisciplinary branch of medicine that focuses on the patient as a whole and the many factors that influence their health. It has a wide scope, encompassing elements of socio-economics, the role of legislation, health equity, and disparities found in communities and certain populations. Preventive medical care, or prophylaxis, consists of measures taken for the purpose of disease prevention. Illness and disability are affected by environmental factors, genetic predisposition, disease agents, and lifestyle choices, and are dynamic processes that begin before people realize they are affected.
Disease prevention is based on anticipatory actions that can be classified as primary, primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. The health benefits of preventive care measures can be described in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) saved. Parallel advances in treatment opened other doors for the prevention of antitoxin diphtheria and arsphenamine syphilis. Preventive medicine can be found in primary care clinics, government agencies, corporations, public health departments, health centers, and health insurance companies.
The Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) provides examples that improve the health and well-being of populations (for example, preventive medicine physicians also help ensure healthy pregnancies and safe work environments, treat depression, work on poison control, and administer vaccines) to prevent diseases and viruses such as COVID-19, influenza, measles, meningitis, polio, pneumonia or shingles. In 1932, sulfonamides and later antibiotics, including penicillin, streptomycin, chlortetracycline and chloramphenicol, offered new opportunities for the prevention and cure of bacterial diseases. Primary prevention refers to all measures designed to prevent the development of risk factors in the first place, early in life and even before conception, since Ruth A. Advances in preventive medicine in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries also included a broader recognition of psychological factors in relationship with total health, new surgical techniques, new methods of anesthesia and genetic research.
There are many different paths in preventive medicine, so the physician can practice in a number of areas, including public health, health policy, clinical medicine, and research. A greater understanding of endocrine functions, with the production of prepared hormonal extracts such as insulin, led to preventive measures in certain metabolic diseases. If you have ever been screened for high blood pressure or diabetes and treated it before the condition developed, then you have received preventive medications. In each of them, preventive medicine physicians affect health care delivery and health outcomes at the individual, practice, community and community levels.
They also develop strategies to address health problems in the public, which can lead to new programs that promote overall health and prevent the spread of diseases. Many argue that preventive measures only cost less than future treatment when the proportion of the population who would get sick in the absence of prevention is quite large. They argue that, while many treatments for existing diseases involve the use of advanced equipment and technology, in some cases, this is a more efficient use of resources than attempts to prevent the disease. .
