Psychology in Healthcare

• Psychology studies how people think, feel, and behave and contributes to health promotion, illness prevention/treatment, identifying psychological factors influencing health/illness, and improving healthcare systems and health policy.

Biomedical vs. Biopsychosocial Models

• Traditionally, medicine was uninterested in psychological or social factors, with the biomedical model dominating Western medicine.
• This model views illness as biological/physiological processes, treatable with physical interventions like drugs and surgery.
• The body is seen as a machine that can be fixed. The biopsychosocial model considers psychological and social factors influencing health; it recognizes patients as complex individuals, where thoughts and feelings affect health, illness, diagnosis, and treatment adherence.

Health Behavior and Psychology`

• Doctors recognize the role of psychology in medicine, acknowledging the importance of understanding feelings, emotions, and reactions to diagnosis and coping with illness.
• Psychology provides value to medicine through motivation.

Diversity, Stereotypes, and Medical Practice

• Cognitive functions can lead to stereotypical thinking.
• Reflecting on and challenging personal stereotypes around disability.

GMC Requirements

• Doctors must increase knowledge and awareness of patient diversity, challenge stereotypes to meet GMC requirements.
• Medical students study diversity because different groups have different health problems, lifestyles impacting health, service preferences, health beliefs/behaviors, and health needs.
• Human diversity is relevant.

Treating Patients with Respect

• Treat patients fairly/respectfully, whatever their life choices/beliefs of age, color, culture, disability, ethnic/national origin, gender, lifestyle, marital/parental status, race, religion/beliefs, sex, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status.
• Be aware of personal values, beliefs, and stereotypes and how they impact on treating patients and interactions with colleagues.
• Not expected to agree with patients or approve of them in order to provide good health care, but you will need to understand them and respect their rights
• This session offers you time to reflect on issues that may be sensitive for you and to consider how you might address them during your training
• Doctors address sensitive issues during training.

Knowledge Organization and Stereotypes

• Memories are stored as mental representations organized in schemata (groups of related information like restaurant or fruit schemas) for efficient processing and predictability.
• Stereotypes are based on this.
• Members of a group share characteristics.

Stereotypes as Shortcuts`

• "Shortcuts" overlook diversity.
• Social schemata (stereotypes) exist about people, roles and relationships.
• Ideas about "typical" older persons/politicians emphasize negative traits and resist change.
• In-group/out-group attributions exist.
• Groups are a source of self-identity and self-esteem.
• Assign people to categories to understand the social environment through social identification.
• Social comparison builds self-esteem, but people focus on negative attributes of out-group members and positive attributes of the in-group results in prejudice, stemming from negative biases in many stereotypes. Compliance, conformity, and group behavior are influenced by social and cognitive processes
• All human beings are susceptible so we need to know about them and be vigilant.