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How Could Use of the Concept of ‘Critical Practice’ Help to Avoid the Creation of Unnecessary Dependency in Older People Who Are Users of Health and Social Care Services?

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In order to try and answer this question I will firstly explain what ‘critical practice’ is in some detail. I will describe what theories and ideology are, as these are both very relevant to this essay. I will talk about various users in the health and social care system, but will mostly concentrate on older people, so this will then enable me to answer the question correctly. From reading the course material and doing the online work I found there was definitely a lot involved in becoming a critical practitioner. Lots of work needs to be done, starting with basic ground work, and building right up. It involves not just the one professional, but all professionals involved, and it needs for everyone to work together, as part of a team to …show more content…

To enable them to do this they need to understand recent research, always weighing up the evidence to their own knowledge base, and expertise. Scientific research enables an approach, to evolving knowledge and practice, and in this way, one can test out their beliefs to either prove or, alternatively, to attempt to disprove them. Another name for critical practice is ‘evidence based practice’. Evidence-based practice (EBP) is an interdisciplinary approach to clinical practice. Its basic principles are, that all practical decisions made, should be based on research studies, and that these research studies, are selected and interpreted, according to some specific norms characteristics for EBP (Birger, 2011). Using EBP gives practitioners the reassurance that they are giving the patient the correct treatment, and not just giving them what they believe is correct, whilst using their own current knowledge only. Practitioners make decisions every day, and for some, these decisions can be life threatening. This enables the practitioner to know, that what they are doing is the right thing to do. Marsh et al. (2005) argues that all practitioners’ actions and their final decision on medication and/or treatment should come from research and proven theory. They tell us, that the better a practitioner is informed; the better it is for those, who find themselves in a highly disadvantaged state i.e., someone who has been diagnosed with a life threatening

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