Health, Illness and Medicine in Canada - Tapa blanda

A study of the sociology of health, illness, and medicine. It includes research findings and statistical data on how we try to stay healthy and how we respond to illness, on how we live and how we die. Chapters on nursing and midwifery and on complementary and alternative medicine have been written for this edition, which includes over 100 tables and figures, as well as vignettes on such topics as medical technologies, pioneers in medicine, epidemics, environmental disasters, and the history of medicine. Canada's health-care system has been largely defined by physicians, hospital administrators, and government bureaucrats. It has been a boon to many, but has meant the entrenchment of allopathic medicine over such alternatives as chiropractic and naturopathy. As Canada's population ages and chronic illnesses proliferate, interventionist and pharmaceutical solutions to health problems become less relevant and extremely costly. Allopathic interventions such as surgery and chemotherapy may increase quantity of life at the expense of its quality. Clarke uses four different sociological perspectives - structural-functional, conflict, symbolic interactionist, and feminist - to examine occupational diseases, environmental challenges, the inequities of age, gender, class, race, and ethnicity, the experience of getting sick and going to the doctor, and the extensive and profit-motivated impact of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. "Health, Illness, and Medicine in Canada" also considers the Canadian health-care system in historical and international context.