What Is Medical Pluralism

Submitted By mdj4150
Words: 417
Pages: 2

1. Medical pluralism provides clients with many forms of healing and gives them a range of choices which can enhance quality of health. However, it can also cause conflicting models of illness and healing, a situation that can result in unhappy outcomes between patients and healers. An example of medical pluralism is The Sherpa of Nepal which has its traditional healing system but also has selective use of Western biomedicine.
2. An explanatory model reveals how people make sense of their illness and their experiences of it. Explanatory models are often used to explain how people view their illness in terms of how it happens, what causes it, how it affects them, and what will make them feel better. The usefulness of explanatory models is limited if the interviewer is just focused on diagnosis or introducing treatment or solution. This is one of the different conflicts when using an explanatory model.
3. The epidemiological approach is the study of factors effecting health and disease among populations and is considered a fundamental aspect of public health research. People in settled populations are more at risk of disease because of how close their quarters are to one another. An example is Pastoralist Turkana men, in which half of them had eye infections and were mal-nourished. Mobile populations have better access to medical facilities and are not in such close proximity as a whole.
4. One similarity between Shamanic and Western biomedical healers is they both, as a whole use essences from herbs. They also form a bond between their patients. The main difference is that Shaman believes in spirits, while