Psychosocial Factors Affecting Healthcare Professionals

Psychosocial Factors Affecting Healthcare Professionals
Psychosocial factors refer to factors that affect specific areas of an individual life, particularly their physical health. Healthcare professionals might sometimes overlook or decide not to include the psychosocial factors, which may result in problems in patients’ care. Psychosocial factors affecting healthcare professionals include time constraints due to a limited workforce, poor communication between physicians and nurses and limited interest in the patients’ psychosocial factors. Healthcare professionals have few staff members, which leads to rushing in patient education or sometimes reducing the amount of information for patients (Upton, 2013). As a result, the effectiveness of patient education and adherence to treatment is compromised unless healthcare professionals understand their patient’s perceptions of their conditions and treatment.
Psychosocial Factors Affecting Patients
Psychosocial factors can also affect patients’ education due to their past experiences. Some patients feel their fate is already decided, and there is no need to pay attention to anything said by physicians. Some patients might feel that some infections need medication instead of simple fixes like resting and over-exerted limb or gargling for a sore throat. Psychosocial factors should be considered to facilitate effective patient education. Providing patients with information concerning their conditions or treatment without considering various factors that might prevent them from following the recommendations is a waste of time and results in poor teaching results.
Personality Styles
Personality styles refer to factors portrayed by individuals which make them behave in a certain way with unpredictable, provoking and impulsive personality styles (Diener & Lucas, 2016). Health professionals can approach personality styles differently to maximize patients’ results, such as setting small goals at the beginning and advancing as the patients comply. Also, healthcare professionals should involve patients in the teaching process to make them feel like a section of their care. Self-perception is how individuals see themselves; younger people are more concerned about their outer look than what they are being treated for. The perfect method of helping individuals with this factor is understanding their concerns and approaching their fears in the education and treatment process.
Adjustment to Illness Steps
Patients’ ad...