Talk:Health science

-Removed vandalism- Libertarian99 (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Fundamental sourcing and definition for page

In the UK, we have a clear definition of a healthcare scientist - they are an applied scientist who uses their skills for the diagnosis, treatment and care of patients (as opposed, say, to other clinicians - such as doctors & nurses and to those scientists who are involved purely in research into conditions, rather than direct care for individuals who have particular conditions. Healthcare science are the disciplines that healthcare scientists practices.

This article fails to clearly define health science and the definitions early in the page seem to drift around between applied science, life science and a variety of practices which may or may not fit various definitions of health care.

I note that there are very few references in this page - certainly none to the fundamental definitions that should be used in an encyclopaedic article. As such I've tagged the article unreferenced.

In addition, I have a great problem with this article containing references to a variety of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) practices (see comments below). If you refer to the wikipedia alternative medicine page it defines CAM as 'treatments not proven using scientific methods'. So this area of intervention is - by that definition - not scientific. So it's hard to see why this material should be on a page about a sort of science.

I think there are much more appropriate and clearly-defined places for much of the content in this article and will start to rebuild this page in the near future if people don't object strongly to this.

I know this is just my individual take on this article - and may relate to my UK background. So I'm grateful for any thoughts and comments people have before I start changing things

Jpmaytum (talk) 15:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

After receiving no comment back on the above post, I've edited and recreated a new - and referenced - page Healthcare science. This page is now just a redirect Jpmaytum (talk) 11:27, 1 June 2011 (UTC) Jpmaytum (talk) 11:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Wondering

Wondering how to edit the disorders listed on the subject page?
The optional WikiProject Medical Conditions standards might help.

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We might distinguish among the health sciences between those which merely analyze a field or diagnose a problem; and those which also present a specific treatment for that problem.

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Is it just me or is this new style of listing the topics harder to read than the old style? It worked fine for a number of articles like Mathematics (from which this style was based on) until that was changed too. -- Ram-Man

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I feel an objection to the current style of this page.
It used to be mess but now it looks a bit more organized however it is without internal design and it is harder to read even for a medical professional.
What I propose is to remove all references to diseases or at least make this large list consistent.
IMO this should be what the title of the article says "Health science" and it should lead to branches of medicine and related fields like alternative medicine, basic sciences of medicine, hygiene etc.
Kpjas 2002-10-27

I think it is a great idea, which is why I have been focusing on this page. I have no idea, however, what would be a valid thing to do. It is not clear (to me) what "Health Science" is so I have not attempted to remove all of what is currently here, though I reorganized everything to make more sense. Feel free to rewrite the whole thing, just so long as we can easily get to all this information (maybe one link away).

What are the main subdivisions of health science? -- Ram-Man

My idea for this page might not be the best one because we don't have the term "Health science" in Poland and it's now unclear to me what it should mean to a native English speaker.
I would move away from specific diseases and by all means organs. I would do a large introduction why and how "Health science" emerged in 19th and 20th centuries.
This articles should naturally be interlinked with articles like "Health", "Disease", "Evidence based medicine", "History of medicine" and specific branches of "Health science".
I think I should research this subject a little to answer your question. It is only my general idea.
Kpjas 2002-10-28

I'm from the United States (a native English speaker) and I am not even sure what direction it should take. If you take a look at some of the other Main Page articles, like Mathematics, they list a lot of topics within the field. Now I am not saying it should look like that exactly, but I like the idea of having a broad range of topics that someone coming to this page from the main page will have a large enough selection of topics. Right now the information stored in this page is not located anywhere else and it is fairly important information. -- Ram-Man

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I rewrote and updated the main text of the article. Hopefully it is a bit more clear and concise. The lists still need some organizing and thinning out. -- Ram-Man

I appreciate what you have done with this article. Well done ! I will comment on some portions later on. The major problem is what to do with this list. Specialities ? Conditions ? Ideally it could be made into a continous flow of the article. Maybe short descriptions of specialties with most important organs and diseases they deal with ? Some hierarchy ( plus links of specialities) is a must.
Kpjas 2002-10-30

I think what may need to happen is that we put the list of medical conditions into their own respective pages, such as the pages linked to by the "More..." links. I like the idea of having a list at the bottom to choose from a wide range of health science topics, as these main page articles are a sort of table of contents to the topic. Maybe some good idea for a rewrite will hit me soon. -- Ram-Man

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"Health science research builds on the pure sciences of biology, chemistry, and physics."

"pure" or "basic"

"Medical doctors or physicians, surgeons, and nurses are commonly thought of as the chief members of medicine, however, medicine includes many different branches and professions. Some common medical areas include first aid, midwifery, nursing, surgery, and triage."

I'd move it to some other article. Healthcare system ? "Healthcare profession" ? "Medical profession" ?

The application of scrutiny of scientific and empirical methods to practice of medicine turned it into health science and since then it has moved away from traditional health practices. Accumulating specialist knowledge caused gradual emergence of more and more narrow fields of health sciences. This undue processes of specialization has given rise to popularity of holistic medicine and alternative medicine.

There is a distinct division between branches of medicine that are involved in conservative or operative methods.
Cardiology is a branch of medicine that studies disorders of human cardiovascular system, especially, the heart. This knowledge is applied to treatment of a number of conditions; importantly they are major causes of morbidity and mortality in Western societies : coronary heart disease, cardiac arrhythmias, heart attack, for a more extensive list see cardiology article.

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This page is getting too long. Shouldn't some of it - eg all the entries under Endocrinology - be set out on a separate page?

Homeopathy

I think it important to note that there are two Pharmacopea's approved by the FDA. One is the U.S.Pharmacopea and the other is the U.S.Homeopathic Pharmacopea. The co-existence of these two documents would certainly imply acceptance of the doctrines of Homeopathy. Burt M

New title?

Can we give this article a new title? I propose "Health Systems". That would remove the obvious POV (to me, anyway, and probably others who are familiar with non-western and alternative health systems). Then each tradition can be split into subcategories, rather than allowing western traditions to dominate. My POV, for the record: Western medicine and "applied" sciences are no more science than anything else which can be proven with scientific methods, i.e. the efficacy of accupuncture treaments vs. conventional acceptance of treatments like lobotomies in the 20th century. Admiralblur 22:45, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Two parts to health science

As evidenced by the large section entitled "Health delivery" and the long lists at the end, the article is heavy on discussing the application of health-related knowledge but severly lacking in discussing the acquisition of that knowledge. Any thoughts on how to expand this? Edwardian 20:58, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Removing reference to new age/spiritual procedures

Someone has included things like "Christian Science." These might be approaches some people choose use in pursuit of health, but they are not health sciences. Their exclusion from science seems very obvious, so I'm removing them immediately. I'm new at Wikipedia editing, but I'm acting in good faith that this is appropriate Wikipedia etiquette. If this action is disputable, I'd appreciate a message or further discussion.

I would also suggest revising the "Health Practices" section. Although the complementary health practices list could indeed be considered "health practices," I think it is inappropriate in the context of the "Health science" article, especially in light of the definition on the first line of the article: "Health science or biomedical science is the applied science dealing with health." Many of the practices on this page are not sciences, despite some of them being nominally "-ologies" or "Science." Perhaps we could stick with actual sciences, and in the interest of completeness, perhaps mention that some people may disregard health sciences in favour of non-scientific/non-medical treatments, and provide a link to a category more appropriate to those treatments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Libertarian99 (talk • contribs) 11:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)