Nurses are at the heart of patient care. We pride ourselves in developing relati
ID: 128343 • Letter: N
Question
Nurses are at the heart of patient care. We pride ourselves in developing relationships with our patients and being their advocates. What better way to advocate for America than to work toward helping to change the focus of healthcare from disease to prevention of disease by making and maintaining healthy lifestyle choices and seeking preventative care. We can make a difference by education the population. What ideas do you think would help to achieve this goal in your community? How will the skills you have other than nursing skills help to bring this to reality?
Explanation / Answer
Health promotion and disease prevention are a major emerging theme in geriatric medicine and health care generally. Disease prevention involves actions to reduce or eliminate exposure to risks that might increase the chances that an individual or group will incur disease, disability, or premature death. Some risk factors for disease and disability are mutable or amenable to change (such as personal habits), while others (such as genetic endowment and family history) are not. A major goal of the health promotion and disease prevention approach both for individuals and for an entire population is "to identify the health problems for which preventive efforts can result in more appropriate utilization of health services and improvements in health status".
This approach to health emphasizes the importance of lifestyle and personal behavior in improving personal health status and in maintaining health and functioning, both physical and mental. It also recognizes that the extent to which health care interventions and behavior change or channeling can be effective in promoting health and preventing disease depends in part on current health status and the stage in the life cycle in which particular interventions are introduced.A note of caution is required before the development of health promotion and disease prevention strategies for the elderly population is enthusiastically endorsed. Attempts to improve the quality of old age require an understanding of the risk factors for common disease among the elderly and the efficacy of strategies to decrease the risk of morbidity. Simplistic generalizations from studies of young and middle age adults to the elderly in this realm are frequently invalid. Middle aged adults and the elderly differ in their patterns of disease and disease presentation.There are several reasons for adopting a health promotion and disease prevention approach for the elderly, despite legitimate cautions.The nursing process, consisting of assessment, diagnosis, planning/outcomes, intervention, and evaluation, has been described as the core and essence of nursing, central to all nursing actions. It is a deliberate, logical, and rational problem solving process whereby the practice of nursing is performed systematically. The nursing process includes continuous input from patients, their families, or communities through all phases from assessment to evaluation. Diagnoses, planning, and interventions may be altered at any stage based upon new information from the patient or any other source. As far as possible, the patient should have an active and equal role in the nursing process, constricted only by physical or emotional limitations on their ability to participate.
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