References
Whole-person healthcare: back to the future
Healthcare continues to advance, and treatments that were once only dreamed of have become mainstream. Today's healthcare provision could be perceived as requiring only the prescribed medication and a series of technological skills that are performed competently and supported by evidence. Yet, at the heart of healthcare encounters are issues that are as complex as the treatments, requiring a vision of the whole person as an individual human being.
We are reminded that the World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (WHO, 1946). Despite some challenges to this definition (Huber et al, 2011), the facets of health outlined remain universal and relevant, and have not been suitably amended or replaced; physical, mental and social attributes are still beneficial divisions of health. At the time of the WHO publication, attitudes to public health were challenged by this holistic but theoretical definition of health, marking a departure from a disease-oriented physical, biomedical and expert-dominated view of health. It is opportune to be reminded that the emphasis of the definition was that health is greater than a physiological and medical issue.
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