System Thinking in Health Care Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the System Thinking in Health Care. Answer: In order to deal with complex issues in the public health, system thinking is the best way to investigate this issues. The purpose aims to demonstrate the understanding of how system-thinking concepts can be applied to public health. In this paper, the system approach is compared to the addressing a public health challenge with more traditional biomedical/positivist modelsfor understanding and acting on public health challenges. The essay clearly describes the system thinking. It further presents critical discussion on the differences between systems approaches and other approach. The essay will emphasise on particular public health challenge and drawing on the issues described in the essay, systems perspective will be applied to reflect on intervention approaches that might address the challenge. System thinking in health care is approach towards problems and solution by a way of thinking. In this approach, the dynamic nature of the complex system is appreciated. It appreciates the role of the stakeholders, the implementation of the new policies and actions, even if they generate counterintuitive and unpredictable effects. The positive aspect of system thinking is that it can be applied irrespective of the field of inquiry. The health system comprise of the linear and reductionist approaches. It can be addressed by the system thinking, by testing new ideas in the social systems, through group learning, joint thinking, and shared understanding of the problems (Peters, 2014). System thinking is applied to public health by taking into account the organisational dynamics, pattern of interaction, events, and structure. These are viewed as the components of larger structure. This approach does not react to the event instead; it helps to anticipate to address the challenges emerging in public health. The polices and actions are carefully considered, for its outcome. It is obvious to use system approach owing to the complexity of the public health issues. It involves different concerns to bear, with numerous interacting variables, groups and multiple agencies that need to be accounted for (Swanson et al., 2012). The five basic principles of system thinking are: Purposefulness, composition, connectedness, perspective, and emergence. Purposefulness refers to understanding the purpose of the stakeholders behind the use of your intended product to complete their tasks. The term composition refers to striking balance between contradictory needs and interdependencies. For instance, customization vs standardisation and security vs performance. If a product is delivered in the health care system, then the ecosystem of the product is considered to know the implications of the ecosystem. This refers to the principle of the connectedness. The principle of perspective is used to see the action that caused the results opposite to that intended. Sometimes a product can yield additional capabilities and values. The set of interactions is the emergence (Atun, 2012). Obesity is the significant heath challenge in the present society. According to Brennan et al. (2015) it is the most complex heath challenge of our time. It is the lifestyle disease and is caused by multiple factors such as socioeconomic status, hereditary, educational attainment, diet and many others. There are social and cultural determinants of obesity. The common characteristics in the complex issues are interdependence, heterogeneity, nonlinearity, and self-organisation. It is not possible to use the reductionist search for the causes. If system thinking is used to address obesity, appropriate solution can be identified. It is because in this approach biology is interacting with cultural and social built factors. It means that system thinking omits the aspects of traditional models, which includes relentless search for obesity causes that are specific and isolated. System thinking is justified to address obesity as this epidemic function at multiple levels. At each of this level, there are multiple interactions. Thus, system thinking is the new way of making obesity an issue of everyones business at local level. The national level projects such a work with industry to make food healthier, the campaign called change4life and community interventions like talking to family and individuals directly are the projects that are complemented by system thinking (Mulderrig, 2016). The applications of system thinking to address childhood obesity can take many ways. Firstly, we can cope with the complexities involved in the disease. Secondly, we can skip the aspect of identifying the risk factors of obesity. It is usually the intervention of traditional positivist model. Instead, system thinking tends to understand the intersectoral dynamics and interpersonal dynamics. Thirdly, we can create virtual laboratories, for testing the sustainable interventions and design new ones. Fourthly, system thinking can be applied to generate new hypothesis. It can be used to collect empirical data and identify gaps. Fifthly, integrate multiple disciplines and data sources. Lastly, anticipation of the expected and unexpected results (Brennan et al. 2015). For addressing obesity primary care advocacy involves both physical environment support and social environment support. Under the physical and environmental support, the system thinking approach considers the policies for housing, transportations, food availability, recreation, education, financing and marketing. In the social environment support, the sytem thinking approach considers policies on media, information, individual incentives, industry practices. In this system, thinking approach the family practices and individual behaviour is interlinked to regional urban planning and peer and family networks. Environment is shaped by the individuals. The primary care advocacy involves the physicians and counsellors who advocate patients for promoting healthy lifestyles by social and environmental changes. Thus, it is evident how the system thinking approach is used to address all the interactions involved in different levels at which the obesity epidemic functions (Midgley, 2006). System thinking is different from other traditional biomedical approaches for addressing public health challenges. The traditional model focus on the system decomposed unto the solution components. In most cases, the problem or issue is broken down into small parts or constituents. On the contrary, the system thinking approaches towards solution by taking a broad view of the parameters and the variables involved in fixing long problem (Adam, de Savigny, 2012). Unlike the traditional models, which are too, specific the system thinking can be used in any area such as human resources, environmental, political, and many others in addition to medical. The traditional models are based on the old sayings that can be used t solve the public health issue in one way. Using the system thinking is like integrative thinking where a problem can have many solutions. These are combined to produce the best solution (Atun, 2012). The various health models such as social determinant model of Aboriginal health tend to identify and address the health inequalities in this community. This model is used to identify the impact of spirituality and religion on obesity. It eliminates the factors such as socio economic status and policies contributing to this problem. It does not contain expanded view of the environmental influence on this community. Similarly, the health belief model identifies intervention to obesity based on the understanding that a person will adopt positive lifestyle by perceiving the health benefits (Skinner, Tiro Champion, 2015). This approach mainly focuses on the psychological aspect of the individual. Both of the above models differs from the system thinking approach as they do not focus on bringing a consistent, big picture view to all the stakeholders involved in addressing obesity (Rutter et al., 2017). The social cognitive model of fruits and vegetables consumption to reduce obesity is based on specific domain such as self-efficacy, personal preference and outcome expectancies. Similar the social learning theory to reduce fast food consumption is based on the idea that a child will eat fast food if majority of the people in local area do same. These models are basically the cause and effect thinking. It includes some pitfalls that are overcome by system thinking such as avoiding the independent effects from the casual factors, and one-way causality that is feedback. System thinking avoids the linearity of effects, which are dynamically variable over time. It also avoids the instantaneous effects (Sallis, Owen, Fisher, 2015). Unlike the system thinking approach this are time consuming as they focus on single factors and the intervention is based on just parameter. However, the system thinking approach is similar to the socio-ecological model to some extent (Swanson et al., 2012). Socio-ecological model focus on the broader aspect unlike the above two models. It emphasises on the determinants and linkages among various determinants of obesity. It emphasise on the community, organisational, interpersonal and policy levels. So when this model is used for designing interventions it targets the individuals (ages, sex, psychological factors), interpersonal (social and cultural support, family factors), organisational (policies in schools, work, health care) and community (information, transportation, sedentary) and public policy (policy incentives such as rewards for behaviour). Together these behaviours ensure energy balance. Together it influences the body fat and weight, which in turn influence the risk fact ors of cancer, health costs and others (Ohri-Vachaspati et al., 2015). Public health issue like obesity is complex problem. The system in which this chronic disease is occurring functions at multiple levels. The organisation and the individual actors at each level matters. When the complexity of the individual task is matched with the capacity of the individual and the organisation to respond to a situation, then the system function is optimised. System thinking comes with nonlinear solutions, which completely complements traditional toolbox. This solution-oriented approach compels people to ask different questions. References Adam, T., de Savigny, D. (2012). Systems thinking for strengthening health systems in LMICs: need for a paradigm shift.Health Policy and Planning,27(suppl_4), iv1-iv3. Atun, R. (2012). Health systems, systems thinking and innovation.Health policy and planning,27(suppl 4), iv4-iv8. Brennan, L. K., Sabounchi, N. S., Kemner, A. L., Hovmand, P. (2015). Systems thinking in 49 communities related to healthy eating, active living, and childhood obesity.Journal of Public Health Management and Practice,21, S55-S69. Midgley, G. (2006). Systemic intervention for public health.American journal of public health,96(3), 466-472. Mulderrig, J. (2016). Fat-shaming: Change4Lifes anti-obesity nudgecampaign glosses over social inequalities.Democratic Audit UK. Ohri-Vachaspati, P., DeLia, D., DeWeese, R. S., Crespo, N. C., Todd, M., Yedidia, M. J. (2015). The relative contribution of layers of the Social Ecological Model to childhood obesity.Public health nutrition,18(11), 2055-2066. Peters, D. H. (2014). The application of systems thinking in health: why use systems thinking?.Health Research Policy and Systems,12(1), 51. Rutter, H., Savona, N., Glonti, K., Bibby, J., Cummins, S., Finegood, D. T., ... Petticrew, M. (2017). The need for a complex systems model of evidence for public health.Lancet. Sallis, J. F., Owen, N., Fisher, E. (2015). Ecological models of health behavior.Health behavior: theory, research, and practice. 5th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 43-64. Skinner, C. S., Tiro, J., Champion, V. L. (2015). The health belief model.Health behavior: theory, research, and practice. 5th ed. San Francisco (US): Jossey-Bass, 75-94. Swanson, R. C., Cattaneo, A., Bradley, E., Chunharas, S., Atun, R., Abbas, K. M., ... Best, A. (2012). Rethinking health systems strengthening: key systems thinking tools and strategies for transformational change.Health policy and planning,27(suppl_4), iv54-iv61.