Question: There are many factors that affect chronic illness-chronic pain, stigma, social isolation, altered mobility, or fatigue. Utilizing your learning from your readings and the South University Online Library resources, respond to one the following questions:
Based on the research, which of these factors have the greatest impact on a patient? Why? Contrast at least two ways the factors would affect a twelve-year-old with the way they would affect a seventy-five-year-old.
Consider the twelve-year-old and the seventy-five-year-old have a chronic illness. How does the chronically ill patient's illness trajectory influence the plan of care?
Review Healthypeople.gov website. Discuss how you feel these goals will impact the health of the nation. Briefly discuss how you could incorporate these goals/objectives into your day-to-day nursing practice.
Based on the research of chronic illness, the greatest impact I would say for a patient would be chronic pain and altered mobility. I have chosen these two because I put myself in this situation. If I was suffering from a chronic illness, I do not think I can overcome chronic pain or altered mobility. Not being able to move my upper and or lower extremities and enjoying the things I now take for granted such as walking, self-cares such as bathing, toileting, and feeding myself will be unbearable to think about. Having to depend on someone else or even worse not having family will be difficult as well. I think I can manage the social isolation but to be in excruciating pain day and night with no relief from pain meds will drive me to suicidal ideations. Dealing with chronic pain your body may grow accustom to pain meds and the relief may be temporary or may not be 100% effective or I may become addictive. Altered mobility of not being able to transfer or roll side to side or turning myself will send me down a road of depression.
A 12-year-old dealing with chronic pain or altered mobility will show more compliance because at this age they are going through a stage of independence and acceptance from peers. Research showed thatthere was a significant positive correlation between adolescents-valuing involvement in medical decisions and perception of actual involvement. Adolescents who perceived themselves as more involved in their care reported less decisional conflict (David, Lo, & Langer, 2018) A 75-year-old dealing with chronic pain and altered mobility may have a different outlook because at this age they may feel like they have lived their life and chooses to die as a result or they may feel as if this is a punishment from a bad deed they did in their past. They may be prescribed multiple medications and may have multiple medical problem leading to poor medication adherence and poor compliance (Shruthi, 2016).
Consider the twelve-year-old and the seventy-five-year-old have a chronic illness. How does the chronically ill patient's illness trajectory influence the plan of care? The chronically ill patient for a 12-year-old and or a 75-year-old illness trajectory are imperative for a patient plan of care because this creates a road map for them to sequentially follow to progress healing and management. Our lecture brings out that this is a sick care system there are billions of dollars spent to treat an illness not realizing how cost-efficient it would be to promote a healthy lifestyle and having health insurance. This may help reduce out of pocket cost such as medications, hospital or doctor visits, and any personal health equipment needed such as wheel chair and at home hospital beds. Another illness trajectories action that may manage the course would be to know your family history, some illness due to lifestyle modification may be prevented whereas other illness may not. Some illness has genetic traits and knowing your family medical history ahead of time may be a future benefit. Eventualities often catch patients by surprise and affects their mental health negatively. On my maternal side majority of my aunts and mother have high blood pressure and diabetes and the men usually get tested for prostate cancer. Knowing this information ahead of time may prevent chronic illness if it is caught and treated early.
Review Healthypeople.gov website. Discuss how you feel these goals will impact the health of the nation. Briefly discuss how you could incorporate these goals/objectives into your day-to-day nursing practice.
Researched from the healthy people website, I feel that knowing your family history and staying abreast of your health and taking it seriously will provide the necessary fear to promote a health change to prevention rather than maintenance of a chronic illnesses. I can incorporate this goal through surveys or questionnaires that asks important questions such as how the patient rates their health overall, to what extent are you able to carry out your everyday physical activities such as walking, climbing stairs, carrying groceries, or moving a chair? Or within the last week how many times did they feel fatigue or have any type of pain. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) began tracking health-related quality of life in the U.S. population through the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) in 2010. I would incorporate this in my nursing practice to encourage other nurses as well as patients to promote quality health care through simple questioning. to patients. This may promote patients to keep track and paying attention to their health. Keeping a daily or weekly journal and subconsciously noticing health changes may impact positively on the health of nation. The NHIS will include a generic instrument periodically to support assessment of health-related quality of life in physical, mental, and social domains of life. (Healthy people, 2010).