All that glisters is not gold: discussing quaternary prevention based on popular sayings

Abstract

Medicine has been calling on people to carry out more and more preventive actions, from blood pressure measurements to the application of new vaccines; however, family physicians have been identifying risks and limitations of preventive actions, showing that not all of them are ethically or scientifically justifiable. This is the scope of quaternary prevention, which aims to protect people from over-medicalization and unnecessary procedures. Living in a society that excels in high technology, where terror has turned into business and self-care, an obsession, it can be very difficult to discourage some exam or to unprescribe some medication; but it is precisely in this context that quaternary prevention is deeply necessary, and the difficulty of its practice requires articulating other knowledge and resources beyond the level of evidence or the degree of recommendation of one or another action. Health beliefs are object of person-centered care, and many of them are inspired or translated by popular sayings. In this essay, I discuss the excess of interventions and quaternary prevention from some of them. Analyzing phrases such as “better safe than sorry”, I present aphorisms as tools for understanding quaternary prevention, which can be used by professionals and teachers to discuss this counter-hegemonic practice with patients and students. By articulating popular and professional knowledge, the text contributes to the cultural competence of Primary Health Care and helps to produce more harmonious clinical encounters and to promote less invasive, medicalizing and harmful care.