The given paper is an attempt to develop a concept of social medicine. When social medicine became an important part of state policy, this state policy was not always implemented in the interests of the whole society, and therefore, social medicine was a negative factor for society. Social medicine is considered as a branch of sociology, the object of study and practice of which is a public person. A person not only plays a certain abstract role but his/her relations, actions, actions, and statuses can be subjected to measurements. It is no coincidence that sociometry is one of the main methods of social medicine. There is a general concept, which is a category of knowledge about a person and at the same time about society. This refers to the subject of social medicine – public health.
It is important to note that the process of concept development begins with outlining the issue, which is the divisiveness of the current healthcare system. However, a social doctor as a sociologist, armed with knowledge and methods of curating a social person, turns out to be, in fact, a doctor of society (Kasper et al. 629).
A social doctor not only helps the client get out of a difficult situation for him, but also equips him with knowledge, thanks to which the client can exercise control over the work of the body and, importantly, predict certain physical, mental and creative abilities. A healthy lifestyle from an abstraction turns into a formula for the life of this particular person. If the clinician is indifferent to what kind of social or microsocial environment his/her patient is from, then the social doctor identifies just the most significant social parameters of a person, according to which his/her problem is considered.
The second stage of concept development involves the process of setting a direction change or the subject of alteration. Social medicine, which develops the norms of a healthy lifestyle in a healthy society and exercises social control over an individual, a group of individuals, be it the family, school, work collective, legislative and executive authorities, the judiciary, prisons or the army, is not what something alien, standing over man and society (Greene and Loscalzo 2494). It is a reflection on knowledge and practice of healthy trends in society as a whole. Clinical medicine can be considered as a set of theoretical and practical knowledge about human diseases, methods for their treatment, prevention, and the prognosis of disease results and treatment.
The last step of concept development is the process of presenting the overall picture of the given idea. Social medicine does not make a diagnosis and, therefore, does not cure either an individual, or a group of people, and even less so a society. For a social doctor, a person is not a patient, but a client, just as a social doctor as a specific person is a client, for example, for the hairdresser or lawyer (Kasper et al. 631). Patients are all who seek the help of a clinical physician or clinician: general practitioner, gynecologist, psychiatrist, or sex therapist (Greene and Loscalzo 2497). The clinical doctor must diagnose him before starting to treat the patient. Only when making a diagnosis is it acceptable to prescribe medication.
In conclusion, only social medicine theory, considering fertility, survival, mortality from the qualitative side, is able to assess and predict the true state of affairs in society. Here is an example that has not yet been understood by sociologists, or social psychologists, or clinicians. A person can hold any views on the moral qualities of a person – any definition of the given concept will be abstract and require a special context for its understanding.
Works Cited
Greene, Jeremy A., and Joseph Loscalzo “Putting the Patient Back Together — Social Medicine, Network Medicine, and the Limits of Reductionism”. The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 337, no. 25, 2017, pp. 2493-2499.
Kasper, Jennifer, et al. “All Health Is Global Health, All Medicine Is Social Medicine: Integrating the Social Sciences into the Preclinical Curriculum”. Wolters Kluwer, vol. 91, no. 5, 2016, pp. 628-632.