The Medical Field
The medical field is the study of human health and disease. Practitioners of medicine are called doctors or physicians and have the highest level of training in the healing arts. Generally, doctors are licensed or registered, in order to limit their practice to those cases for which they have the best chance of success. This licensing is a safety measure for the public and also to prevent charlatans from entering the profession.
Most developed industrial countries provide universal health care, in which all citizens are guaranteed access to medical services by a government-owned or privately operated public system that is based on taxation and insurance contributions from the general population. Developing nations are moving toward universal health care as well, but many people still cannot afford the cost of such care.
In addition to doctors, there are a wide variety of highly trained and skilled health care workers who form part of the medical profession. Nurses, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, laboratory scientists, pharmacists, dietitians, physician assistants and a range of other healthcare professionals all contribute to the delivery of modern medicine.
Medicine has been around for millennia, with most early practices being a mixture of art (creativity and skill) and religion or philosophy (herbalism, bloodletting and the Greek theory of the four humours). With the development of modern scientific biomedical research in the 1800s and 1900s, such pre-modern notions were gradually replaced by the evidence-based approach.
Modern medicine has three main areas: tertiary care, secondary care and primary care. The majority of tertiary care in the developed world is provided by specialist hospitals, often in large cities. These facilities have advanced diagnostic and treatment capabilities that are not available in smaller regional hospitals. Primary care is the first point of contact for most patients, usually through a family doctor or general practitioner. Increasingly, however, primary care is being delivered through community-based practices, where patients can be seen by a health professional at regular intervals.
The linguistic foundation for the entire healthcare system is medical terminology. This language provides a common ground for communication between different healthcare providers, as well as patients. Most medical terminology is derived from the Latin and ancient Greek languages and consists of roots, suffixes and morphemes, which are similar to those used in other fields such as biology and chemistry.
The outcomes that matter to patients for a given condition are typically described as a hierarchy, with Tier 1 involving a patient’s mortality rate and Tier 2 describing functional outcome measures such as a patient’s ability to perform everyday tasks. The measurement and tracking of these outcomes relies on a common language, which is achieved through medical coding and allows data to be aggregated across services, sites and time. The standardized language of medical coding also enables records to be easily transferred between healthcare providers. This is especially important in the current era of electronic medical records.
The medical field is the study of human health and disease. Practitioners of medicine are called doctors or physicians and have the highest level of training in the healing arts. Generally, doctors are licensed or registered, in order to limit their practice to those cases for which they have the best chance of success. This licensing is a safety measure for the public and also to prevent charlatans from entering the profession. Most developed industrial countries provide universal health care, in which all citizens are guaranteed access to medical services by a government-owned or privately operated public system that is based on taxation and insurance contributions from the general population. Developing nations are moving toward universal health care as well, but many people still cannot afford the cost of such care. In addition to doctors, there are a wide variety of highly trained and skilled health care workers who form part of the medical profession. Nurses, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, laboratory scientists, pharmacists, dietitians, physician assistants and a range of other healthcare professionals all contribute to the delivery of modern medicine. Medicine has been around for millennia, with most early practices being a mixture of art (creativity and skill) and religion or philosophy (herbalism, bloodletting and the Greek theory of the four humours). With the development of modern scientific biomedical research in the 1800s and 1900s, such pre-modern notions were gradually replaced by the evidence-based approach. Modern medicine has three main areas: tertiary care, secondary care and primary care. The majority of tertiary care in the developed world is provided by specialist hospitals, often in large cities. These facilities have advanced diagnostic and treatment capabilities that are not available in smaller regional hospitals. Primary care is the first point of contact for most patients, usually through a family doctor or general practitioner. Increasingly, however, primary care is being delivered through community-based practices, where patients can be seen by a health professional at regular intervals. The linguistic foundation for the entire healthcare system is medical terminology. This language provides a common ground for communication between different healthcare providers, as well as patients. Most medical terminology is derived from the Latin and ancient Greek languages and consists of roots, suffixes and morphemes, which are similar to those used in other fields such as biology and chemistry. The outcomes that matter to patients for a given condition are typically described as a hierarchy, with Tier 1 involving a patient’s mortality rate and Tier 2 describing functional outcome measures such as a patient’s ability to perform everyday tasks. The measurement and tracking of these outcomes relies on a common language, which is achieved through medical coding and allows data to be aggregated across services, sites and time. The standardized language of medical coding also enables records to be easily transferred between healthcare providers. This is especially important in the current era of electronic medical records.