Module 8: Canadian Healthcare System

Module 8: The Canadian Healthcare System and Integrative Care

• Medicare is a fundamental component of Canada's social safety net, funded through general taxation. The Canada Health Act (1984) established key principles: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility.
• Governance Structure:
  • Federal government sets national principles, finances through transfer payments, targets specific groups (Indigenous, veterans), and establishes national health promotion/disease prevention policies.
  • Provincial/territorial governments administer health care insurance plans, manage and fund health services, determine hospital locations and organization, and reimburse physician/hospital costs.
  • Professionals are largely self-regulated, managing their own standards, competencies, and ethics codes.
• Primary Health Care: Forms the foundation with four pillars: teams, access, information, and healthy living.
• Healthcare Delivery Settings:
  • Institutional sector includes hospitals, long-term care, and psychiatric facilities.
  • Community sector includes public health, physician offices, community health centres, home care, and hospice/palliative care.
• Five Levels of Care: Health promotion enables control over health improvement.
• Current Healthcare Challenges: Sustainability, political economy of health, climate change, primary health care spending, healthcare planning/delivery, human resources, aging population, and reconciliation commission calls to action.
• Integrative Care: Combines conventional medicine with complementary therapies, focusing on underlying causes of illness rather than just symptoms. This includes categories of natural products, mind-body-spirit interventions, manipulative/body-based methods, and whole systems therapies. Includes specific therapies like relaxation therapy, meditation, imagery, and massage.

Module 9: Patient Education

• Health literacy is the ability to access, understand, evaluate, and communicate health information, including understanding medical information, describing symptoms, finding appropriate help, and managing medications safely.
• Current state in Canada:
  • 60% struggle to understand and act independently.
  • 23% find it hard to find professional help when ill.
  • 54% find it challenging to determine when to seek a second opinion.
• Low health literacy correlates with increased hospitalizations, repeated doctor visits and medication mismanagement.
• Digital health literacy involves skills to search and select online information, judging and transforming online health information, communicating, and using online resources.
• Key factors affecting digital literacy include geographic location (remote communities score lower), education level, age, and income.

Module 10: Growth and Development (part one)

• Human growth and development are continuous and intricate processes based on timing and sequence. Typical patterns help predict/prevent/detect changes, considering various developmental stages, factors, and theories.
• Key components include physical growth (measurable increases, including height, weight, teeth, structures), development (progressive process, increasing capacity, biological/environmental interactions), and influencing factors (genetic, environmental, and interacting factors). It discusses Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Developmental theories like Erikson's stages of psychosocial development are examined with key emphasis on the infancy (birth-12/18), toddler (12-36 months), preschooler (3-5), and school-age (5-12) developmental periods and concerns and potential risks at each period.

Module 11: Growth and Development (part two)

• The role of play is emphasized throughout development as a stress reducer, expression outlet, and growth facilitator, noting the impact of technology on learning and socialization.
• Young adulthood spans from late teens to late 30s includes physical and cognitive development (growth completion), psychosocial development (emotional health tied to personal goals, gender roles, career choices), health considerations (risks, and lifestyle choices).
• Older adulthood (65+) includes considerations of population overview, common misconceptions, developmental tasks, healthcare considerations, and physiological changes.

Module 12: Population Health, Global Health, and Cultural Safety

• Population health strategies focus on improving the health of entire populations while reducing disparities and inequities, based on social justice and trust. It combines health care, protection, and disease prevention/health promotion.
• Community health nursing encompasses public health, home health, mental health, and street health, emphasizing empowerment on individual and collective levels using community-level actions.
• High-priority populations such as people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, new immigrants, refugees, and 2SLGBTQIA+ people are considered.
• Global health considers health of entire populations, including planetary health (emphasizing environmental sustainability and interconnectedness of human health with the natural world). Addresses issues like communicable diseases, pandemics, non-communicable diseases, immigration, discrimination, and climate change.
• Cultural safety and competence, including cultural concepts, diversity, and inclusion, and indigenous health, is also highlighted.

Explore the intricacies of Canada's healthcare system in this quiz, focusing on Medicare, governance structures, and primary health care principles. Understand how federal and provincial governments collaborate to provide accessible health services while ensuring ethical standards among professionals. Test your knowledge and grasp the fundamental concepts of integrative care in Canada.