What is the difference between preventive care and physical examination

In fact, the core is the difference between "partial means" and "overall system". Physical examination is a very important screening link in preventive health care, but it is far from the whole of preventive care.

I have been working in the community public health field for almost 6 years. I often encounter similar misunderstandings when receiving consultations from residents. Many people think that having a physical examination once a year and having normal indicators means that "there is no problem with the body and the health care is in place." In fact, this is not the case. Take the 32-year-old Mr. Chen who came to our department last month to receive a physical examination report. He works in foreign trade, stays up late all the time to catch up with jet lag, and is also a heavy smoker. Except for thickened lung texture and slightly higher uric acid, all other indicators in this year's physical examination were within the normal range. He stuffed the report in his bag on the spot and was about to leave. Our public health doctor grabbed him and chatted for more than 20 minutes before making an appointment for him. He came to a three-month smoking control plan, a low-purine diet adjustment plan, and made an appointment with him to test his uric acid once a month. After autumn, he can make an appointment to get a flu vaccine and a pneumonia vaccine. You see, the process of checking the indicators at the beginning is a physical examination, and the whole set of intervention, follow-up, and pre-protective actions that follow the indicators and are customized based on his living habits are all part of preventive health care.

However, there are actually different opinions in the industry on whether to strictly distinguish between the two. Many colleagues at the grassroots level feel that there is no need to be too picky. After all, we are now doing health science popularization for residents. The first step is to persuade everyone to develop the habit of regular physical examinations. If you start by saying that "physical examinations do not equal preventive health care", it will easily confuse people. They feel that health management is too complicated and just ignore it; Controlled preventive medicine experts often emphasize to us that we need to slowly convey a more complete concept to everyone, otherwise it will be easy to have a situation where "every year the physical examination is normal, but a serious illness is in the late stage". Many people just think that everything will be fine after the physical examination, and they still eat and drink, stay up late and overdraw, and ignore daily health maintenance. By the time the physical examination reveals problems, they have often been dragged to a more serious level.

To put it bluntly, it is like taking care of our own house. A physical examination is equivalent to an annual house safety inspection. It can detect obvious problems such as whether there are cracks in the wall, whether there are leaks in the water pipes, and whether the circuits are aging. Preventive health care is to open the windows frequently for ventilation. A complete set of maintenance actions, including regularly oiling the hardware, running a dehumidifier during the rainy season to prevent mold on the wall, and closing the doors and windows in advance during typhoons. Investigation is just one step to help you find the problem accurately. If you really want to live a safe life, you still have to rely on daily protection bit by bit.