Quaternary prevention is a highly debated concept in the medical field. Many professionals are not in favor of its use as a guide for public health policies, and some even deny its validity.
The truth is that, as time passes and new technological advances emerge, it is clear that we require quaternary prevention. As we will see throughout the article, it depends on its correct application that medical resources reach everyone in good quality.
Quaternary prevention has been defined as actions that are carried out to avoid an overuse of medical resources by health professionals and patients. This includes avoiding overtreatment, avoiding unnecessary practices, and offering ethical alternatives.
The year 1986 is marked as the beginning of the idea of ​​quaternary prevention, when different medical researchers warned about the existence of a medicalization of everyday life. The process has run its course, despite the warnings.
We must clarify that this prevention does not aim to eliminate the availability of medical advances, but to rationalize. For this reason, patients are involved in the process, since the doctor is one more link in the long chain that supports the medicalization of everyday life.
And, ultimately, it is intended to provide security to patients. None of us would like to go through a therapeutic fury, or to be made to spend more money than we have in vain.
The types of prevention
This idea has been called quaternary prevention because prevention activities are considered staggered:
Primary: it is the prevention that is carried out with people who are not yet sick. It seeks to prevent them from getting sick.
Secondary: it is the early diagnosis. A person has a disease, but does not know it, because he has not yet developed symptoms. If we detect it in time, we will improve the prognosis.
Tertiary: it is already about sick people. The best available treatment is proposed here to avoid fatal outcomes and consequences that are sequelae and alter the quality of life in the future.
Quaternary: finally, the one that interests us in this article is prevention that limits the indiscriminate use of medical resources.
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