& Healing Centre
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General Health and Wellbeing.
Quality of life (QOL) also known as General Health and Well
being is used in healthcare to refer to an individual's emotional, social and
physical wellbeing, including their ability to function in the ordinary tasks of
living. It is a term used most frequently in the context of medicine and
healthcare, where the impact of a disease may reduce "Health-related Quality of
Life"
Understanding quality of life is recognized as increasingly important in health
care, where the relationship between cost and value raises complex problems. For
instance, health providers must make economic decisions about access to
expensive drugs that may prolong life by a few months, and weight these against
alternative uses such as preventative medicine or a surgical bed. Monetary
measures alone do not readily apply. In the case of chronic and/or terminal
illness where there is no effective treatment or cure, there may be an emphasis
on improving GHQoL through interventions such as symptom management, adaptive
technology, and palliative care.
Health care (often healthcare in American English), refers to the treatment and
management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered
by the medical, dental, complementary and alternative medicine, pharmaceutical,
clinical laboratory sciences (in vitro diagnostics), nursing, and allied health
professions. Health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote
health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether
directed to individuals or to populations”.
Before the term health care became popular, English-speakers referred to
medicine or to the health sector and spoke of the treatment and prevention of
illness and disease.
