The Health-Illness Continuum Essay

Research the health-illness continuum and its relevance to patient care. In a 750-1000 word paper, discuss the relevance of the continuum to patient care and present a perspective of your current state of health in relation to the wellness spectrum. Include the following : 1) Examine the health illness continuum and discuss why this perspective is important to consider in relation to health and the human experience when caring for patients. 2) Explain how understanding the health-illness continuum enables you, as a health care provider, to better promote the value and dignity of individuals or groups and to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing. 3) Reflect on your over all state of health. Discuss what behaviors support or detract from your health and well-being. Explain where you currently fall on the health illness continuum. 4) Discuss the options and resources available to you to help you move towards wellness on the health -illness spectrum. The Health-Illness Continuum Essay.  Describe how these would assist in moving you toward wellness(managing a chronic disease, recovering from an illness, self-actualization e.t.c) Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style guide, located in the student success center. An abstract is not required. This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. you are required to submit this assignment to Lopeswrite. Refer to the Lopeswrite technical support articles for assistance. Benchmark information. This benchmark assess the following competency: RN-BSN 5.1, Understand the human experiences across the health-illness continuum.

Dr. John Travis came up with the health-illness continuum concept in the 1970s. It means that health in a human being is not a permanent thing. Anytime along the health-illness continuum a disease may interrupt the wellbeing of the person given the prevailing biophysical and environmental factors. In this wellness continuum there is a middle neutral point that indicates the individual is in perfect health with no imbalance. The furthest point on the right side is extreme wellness end of the continuum. The furthest point on the left is the point that represents untimely death or a state of health that is worst (Nursing Fundamentals, 2015; Nazar, 2017; Wellness Inventory, 2018). This discussion is about the health-illness continuum with regard to the human person and the care given by healthcare workers. The Health-Illness Continuum Essay.

Importance of Health-Illness Continuum

The health-illness continuum is an ingenious way of quickly gauging the potential health needs of a person. This is important because when more and more people are placed on the left side of the continuum, there is a problem of public health proportions. This scenario can be applied to the general population and influence the way interventions are apportioned. For instance, the health authorities may have to concentrate more on secondary prevention and health promotion strategies for the persons who are on or near the extreme right of wellness. The rationale behind this is that when persons are experiencing wellness you attempt to make them remain healthy and productive. This could mean educating the healthy population on matters such as screening (such as colorectal cancer screening). It could also mean educating the well clients on a change in lifestyle habits such as stopping to eat junk food and stopping smoking. For those on the left of the continuum, the health professional may decide to actively treat the illnesses before enabling them to move from the left (illness) to the right (wellness). In this context, the planning of care depends entirely on the statistics represented by the health-illness continuum. As a matter of fact, entire public health systems may get a picture of the resources required to treat the public by merely glancing at the health-illness spectrum (Burke, n.d.).

 How the Understanding of the Health-Illness Continuum Makes a Better Health Professional

By properly understanding and appreciating the health-illness continuum, the health professional like a nurse will be able to appreciate how patients oscillate between the right and left of the health-illness continuum. The Health-Illness Continuum Essay.  At any particular point, the health-illness continuum presents the nurse with valuable information on the proportion of persons who are sick and those who are well. The nurse can then plan for the care of the population from an informed standpoint. This knowledge about the health-illness continuum will make the healthcare provider better in managing both wellness and disease (Burke, n.d.).

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The State of Health of the Author

Continuing with the discussion on how the health-illness continuum affects the healthcare provider, it is essential to note that the health worker himself or herself will have to decide where they belong on that health-illness spectrum. The rationale behind this thinking is that as a human being too, the healthcare worker is also supposed to know where they belong on that health-illness spectrum. This is because if sick the healthcare worker can affect and impact almost everyone that they come into with, taking the example of Covid-19 for instance. Also, a healthy healthcare worker is the one capable of providing comprehensive care in a holistic and jovial manner. Some of the behaviors that detract the author from health and wellbeing include being a workaholic which predisposes them to burnout, and harbouring a lot of stress as a result of spending more time at work than at home. Having said that, the author believes that they are healthy with no obvious disease process at the moment.  They therefore place themselves near the furthest end of the right arrow in the health-illness continuum spectrum. But like the other lay people, the author as a healthcare professional also needs health promotion interventions to keep them on the right side of the spectrum of the health-illness continuum.

Options and Resources Available to Help the Author Move Towards Health on the Health-Illness Continuum

There are many options available to keep the author and others on the right side of the health-illness continuum. One of these is the continuous professional development. As much as this continuous professional education is helpful in making the author as a healthcare worker deliver tested evidence-based practice interventions to patients, they are also in a position to benefit from the same and implement the same recommendations on themselves. The other resource is the fellow healthcare workers. These are colleagues who will be more than ready to help the author with information and advice when they start sliding towards the left of the health-illness spectrum. The Health-Illness Continuum Essay.

Conclusion

The health-illness spectrum is a pictorial representation of the health of any population as proposed in the 1970s by Dr. Travis. It is a tool that can help the healthcare workers effectively plan care and deliver expected quality of care. For public health authorities, the health-illness continuum picture of the populations they care for is a very useful resource for planning.

References

Burke, A. (n.d.). Health promotion and disease prevention: NCLEX-RN. RegisteredNursing.org. https://www.registerednursing.org/nclex/health-promotion-disease-prevention/

Nazar, A. (2017). Health illness continuum. https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/arifasudheer/health-illness-continuum-80612835

Nursing Fundamentals (2015). The health-illness continuum. https://brooksidepress.org/nursing_fundamentals_1/?page_id=115&cn-reloaded=1

Wellness Inventory (2018). Three key wellness concepts. https://www.wellpeople.com/WhatIsWellness.aspx . The Health-Illness Continuum Essay.