What are the purpose/goals of screenings? Are the screenings for individuals only, please explain why or why not. List five screenings you feel are most important for the population to complete. Explain some of the ethical issues about screenings.
Screening refers to the act of identifying an unrecognized disease in a person who is assumed to be in a healthy condition. The screening process involves carrying out tests, procedures, and other examinations that are applied to identify whether an individual is suffering from a specific infection (White et al., 2015). Usually, a screening test is administered to people who are not ill. A screening program should include various components ranging from inviting the target individual to accessing effective treatment for the individual diagnosed with the disease. Depending on the complication of the patient’s status, one or more types of screening may be carried out to determine a patient’s sickness. The process of medical diagnosis first involves screening where a patient is examined to determine his or her health condition (Siu, 2015). Through screening, it becomes possible for medical practitioners to give the patient an appropriate treatment, hence, reducing the risk of death or complicated health conditions resulting from a given kind of medication. Secondly, screening aims at detecting diseases at an early stage even before signs and symptoms begin to appear. This helps to curb the spread of certain diseases. Conditions such as cancer can be easily prevented from spreading all over the body if they are discovered early. Therefore, disease identification helps the victim to be treated and improve his or her health at an early stage.
The health screenings are usually for individuals only; this is because individuals aged 46 years and above are vulnerable to diseases such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and abnormal cholesterol profiles (Jong & Wert, 2015). Therefore, it is prudent for such individuals to frequently go for a medical checkup, which majorly encompasses screening; this helps to reduce the chances of being affected by the above infections as they are identified earlier and hence easily curbed. There exist different types of health screening, depending on how they are administered. The common types of screening tests include pap smear, mammography, PSA, dermatological, and colonoscopy. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
The medical industry, just like other industries, has a set of rules and standards within which every practitioner is supposed to operate. Within the rules, there lay ethical standards that are defined to help within the aim of safeguarding both the medical practitioner and the patient. Some of the ethical issues about screenings include screening tests that should only be administered when the victim has already put into place all other underlying preventive mechanisms. Secondly, anybody that has undergone the screening test is symptom-free; thus, in case of risk, he or she ought to seek early medical treatment. Thirdly, the individual to be screened is required to write or sign to document of consent before the screening process; this prevents medical practitioners from doing screening against someone’s will. Lastly, the information collected after the screening test should remain confidential and must only be accessed by authorized personnel.
Explain what important information one needs to know about the Vital Signs: Pulse, Respirations, and Blood Pressure. What are the recommended numbers or ranges?
In the human body, pulse refers to the number of heartbeats per minute. The pulse rate differs from one individual to another. However, the pulse rate is often lower when an individual is at rest as compared to when an individual is doing exercise. This is because, during exercise, the body needs more blood rich in oxygen to support respiration. Therefore, more heartbeats per minute are registered. The average pulse rate of a person at rest or in exercise ranges between 60 to 100 beats per minute. When someone has explicitly high heartbeats per minute, he or she is prone to heart failure or attack, in the worst case, such an individual may succumb to death.
Respiration refers to the process in which the body acquires energy from the food it consumes. For the human body to function correctly, it needs energy, and this energy enables the tissues and other body activities to take place in a healthy way within the body. However, to break down the food consumed into energy, the body requires oxygen, which is used to break lipids into ATP, which combines with nitrogen to release energy within the body (Leckey et al., 2018). There are two types of respiration that are aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Aerobic respiration requires oxygen to break down glucose into carbon dioxide, water, and energy. However, during vigorous exercise, the body lacks enough oxygen needed to respire aerobically; for this reason, anaerobic respiration takes place whereby glucose is broken down into lactic acid and energy. However, since lactic acid may cause muscles to stop working and become cramp, oxygen debt breaks the lactic acid into energy. The normal respiration rate for an individual at rest ranges from 13 to 22 breaths per minute. However, during rigorous exercise, the number of breaths per minute may be slightly higher but should not exceed 25 breaths per minute as this could lead to heart failure or could increase the chances of a heart attack.
Blood pressure is a very vital sign in the human body. Blood pressure refers to the strength that blood uses to push against arteries and veins. Just like pulse rate, blood pressure varies with the age of an individual, exercise, weight, and the individual’s health condition. The normal blood pressure of an adult approximately ranges from 120 over 80 to 140 over 90. Blood circulation within the body enables all organs and tissues to receives nutrients, thus facilitating the growth of boy tissues. Also, blood circulation helps to remove unwanted materials from such tissues, such as carbon dioxide. To ensure that all body tissues receive blood in time, the heart has to pump blood at a very high speed or else, tissues may die because of a lack of nutrients. Since blood pressure differs from one person to another, low and high blood pressure should be prevented despite the health, age, or weight of an individual (American Heart Association, 2017). Low blood pressure may cause tissues to die due to a lack of nutrients and oxygen. On the other hand, high blood pressure may initiate heart failure or may cause the heart to burst. Therefore, normal blood pressure is required to ensure all body organs work efficiently and correctly.
References
White, A., Thompson, T. D., White, M. C., Sabatino, S. A., de Moor, J., Doria-Rose, P. V., … & Richardson, L. C. (2017). Cancer screening test use—United States, 2015. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 66(8), 201.
Siu, A. L. (2015). Screening for abnormal blood glucose and type 2 diabetes mellitus: US Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement. Annals of internal medicine, 163(11), 861-868.
De Jong, A., & de Wert, G. M. (2015). Prenatal screening: an ethical agenda for the near future. Bioethics, 29(1), 46-55.
American Heart Association. (2017). What Is High Blood Pressure?. South Carolina State Documents Depository.
Leckey, J. J., Hoffman, N. J., Parr, E. B., Devlin, B. L., Trewin, A. J., Stepto, N. K., … & Hawley, J. A. (2018). High dietary fat intake increases fat oxidation and reduces skeletal muscle mitochondrial respiration in trained humans. The FASEB Journal, 32(6), 2979-2991.