Talk:Healthcare scientists

Proposal to merge with Medical research

I have proposed that this page be merged with Medical research. Please see the Talk page there for discussion. Willbown (talk) 15:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Move is premature

This page was just moved from Health sciences to Healthcare scientists. This page was the main article for Category:Health sciences, so if this is renamed, that category ought to be renamed too, and all the articles in that category ought to have the category name updated. This is about 80 changes at least.

When I think of "scientists" I think of actual people, and this article does not actually list humans, but rather professional disciplines. Willbown, can you say more about why you feel that naming this article "scientists" is better than calling it "sciences?" Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:39, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Blurasberry Sorry, I didn't know about all those other things. And now I don't know how to do them. So you're maybe right about the move being premature.

To answer your question, there's an important distinction between the research activity undertaken to drive a discipline forward and the application of the existing discipline to real world medical issues. As we discussed previously, "Healthcare science" takes in the research dimension, and also implies a much broader range of subdisciplines than is listed here. This is why that name is misleading.

We are agreed that the page is actually documenting a list of professions. And that is precisely how the term is used by the NHS in the UK to market the careers to potential graduates. I looked for a simple way of indicating that and came up with "Healthcare scientists". A more precise, but wordier, option would be "Healthcare science professions" or "Healthcare science careers".

In any case, I am adding text to explicitly clarify that this list is not a list of all the sciences involved in inquiring into health care. Willbown (talk) 10:07, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Willbown You are raising good points and I still think that clarification is warranted because the content of this article did not match the title. I do not think the current title is appropriate, but the previous title also might not be best for this content, so perhaps we could talk this through a little more before finding a stable position.

I sort of agree that the page is documenting a list of professions, but perhaps it would be better to say that this article is a list of medical specialties. Health sciences ought to be more inclusive than a listing of specialties.

I am not in agreement that career is the focus here. Each specialty includes distinct subfields which meet Wikipedia's notability criteria, with medical practice and medical research being the most common subfields. I imagine Health sciences to be all sciences related to health, and even though medical practice is not quite a science, I still think that since each specialty includes a lot of science than it is not inappropriate to call a specialty a science and not label it as only a practice or career or profession.

Going forward, since all the specialties are listed on the specialties page, it may not make sense to duplicate that list here, so perhaps all of these could be deleted. If they were deleted, it probably would not make sense to call this article "Healthcare science professions" or "Healthcare science careers", because whatever was left would be a lot more abstract.

How would you feel about deleting all the specialties from this article, and just linking this article to the article on specialties? Is there any reason to have that list in two places? I think everything here is there also, and better presented. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:56, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Fundamentally I think the question of distinct professions within the medical profession (and allied professions) needs to be distinguished from the question of the variety of fields of inquiry in medical research. Often these two lists have the same words on them, but also they often don't, especially as you drift towards the basic end. As far as I know, for example, there is no profession specific to bone marrow or monoclonal antibodies or gene products or mitochondria.

So to my way of thinking, the professions on this page and as denoted by the NHS as Healthcare science (though I can't find an actual list) are a subset of of all medical professions; they exclude the professions restricted to qualified doctors. Therefore, logically, this page would be a subsection of a more general Medical specialities page. (Though in fact, through the accidents of Wikipedia enthusiasm, this is actually the more detailed page right now.)

But sorting all that out would still leave a great big whole where the varieties of medical research should be listed. Willbown (talk) 15:38, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The profession names are usually "doctor of X" or "researcher in X", where X is the name of a medical specialty. Right now I only see one profession on this page - social worker. Would you call, for example, "radiology" a profession or a specialty? I would be uncomfortable calling it a profession, because it is so much more than that. List of healthcare occupations would be the place to sort more of these, and Category:Healthcare occupations could be used also but it is confused.

In the manual of style for specialties discussion about the professions is specifically excluded, and so far on Wikipedia, so few people write about the professions that there is no style guideline set up yet.

I am not sure what to think right now. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:00, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

OK. So on the basis that the list here is not actually a list of professions but of specialities in medical research, then I suggest the thing to do is: i) to move the list and merge it with the existing (shorter list); ii) clean up this page as one that is focused on the professions involved in being a healthcare scientist, starting completely afresh with a new list of professions. Willbown (talk) 13:08, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Willbown Could you explain that again in other words? Here again are all the articles we are touching:

• Medical research (We mentioned this, but actually have not done anything with it)
• Health sciences, now at Healthcare scientists. The problem here is that we either have to have an article called "Health sciences", or we need to change Category:Health sciences to match the new name for this article and change the name of that category in every article in which it is used. A category with that name should be populated with the names of individuals, which is not how that category is being used now.
• Specialty (medicine), because much of this article is redundant with that article, and the list of medical specialties should only exist once.
• List of healthcare occupations is the place to list professions. There is little overlap with that article and the current content of any of the others.

Tell me again - are you proposing to move the medical specialties listed here to the article on medical specialties? Why do you suggest starting completely fresh - what is wrong with the list at List of healthcare occupations? Do you see anything here which you think belongs at "list of healthcare occupations? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:54, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

The list of related pages is helpful. Looking at that, I would say we should split the page as I suggested, but we should discuss further exactly how. 1. I think this page excluding the list should be merged with List of healthcare occupations. The list itself - what is it? Not occupations we now think. It is probably a mix of specialities in the practice of medicine and medical research. So maybe we just have to bite the bullet and treat it as cruft - ie discard it. Willbown (talk) 20:24, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I've redirected the page to Health professional. Nothing is lost - this list is entirely redundant. Multiple departments have listed healthcare science fields from different approaches. These applied sciences are well-placed in Wikipedia's navigation systems. Health professional now includes a link to List of healthcare occupations. The Transhumanist 18:14, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Move is premature and should be reverted

To move this page from Health sciences to Healthcare scientists is inaedequat. This article does list professional disciplines. As do all linked articles in other languages. I suggest to move it back, preferably to health science and to reformulate the intoduction to describe scientific topics. Willbown, can you agree? --Chrisandres (talk) 20:51, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. The page you propose would be an overview of science related to health. However, this is already dealt with extensively on [Medical_research]. Willbown (talk) 13:36, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

This page's content is a different presentation of the list at Specialty (medicine). I think this list should be merged there. No one has identified any source for defining the term "health science", but at Amazon.com for example, the books covering the topic seem to be introductory texts on health care practice. I think I would like to make the page "Health science" a redirect to Medicine and "Healthcare scientists" a redirect to the healthcare occupations page. Any objection? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:03, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a good plan. Willbown (talk) 13:29, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I've redirected the page to Health professional. The Transhumanist 17:52, 28 October 2014 (UTC)