Health-illness Continuum and its Relevance to Patient Care

Health-illness Continuum
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Health-illness Continuum
Different people have contrasting health experiences. Some people rarely get sick while others sickness is part of their life. The Health-illness continuum is the change processes of an individual in which they experience different types of sickness (Parry et al., 2020). The assessment covers wellness as a whole, including physical, mental, and emotional wellness. Such patients lack a constant health state, for they happen to move back and forth from health and sickness. The person might wake up feeling unwell in the morning, in the midday they are perfectly ok, and start having a headache at night again. The care a patient gets in the hospital depends on the health-illness continuum of the patient. The paper illustrates the importance of the health-illness continuum is essential when caring for the patient. It also explains how it helps a health care provider promote individuals' value and dignity and flourish human life. Finally, the paper also discusses my health status, determining the category I belong to, giving the best option with available resources to better my health.
The Health-illness continuum is essential in caring for a patient due to two main reasons. The first one is that it gives the patient hope, covering both mental and emotional wellness (Corrigan & Schimidt, 2018). A patient who understands their medical condition well is in a far better place to cooperate with the doctors through the medical process than the one that is not aware. The continuum enables the caregiver to measure the patient's medical status, making it easy to determine the patient's best medication. The other advantage is it helps in tracking the patient's progress. The health-illness continuum plays a significant role in ensuring the doctors understand medication's impact on the patients. It gives the caregiver an easy job determining whether they should change the medication or maintain them. A good study of the health-illness continuum can direct the care providers on the best path to take till the patient's wellness is back to normal.
Promoting the value and dignity of individuals creating human flourishing depends on the health-illness continuum. Corrigan and Schimidt (2018) assert that any health care provider needs to study the health-illness continuum of a person before giving any care. They also say that the continuum gives the medical practitioner clarity of the patient's medical history, including any chronic diseases. It helps in identifying any medical allergies hence avoiding medical mistakes. A caregiver that has the health-illness continuum is in a better place in terms of making decisions than the one that is treating the patients with the knowledge of current symptoms only. They might not understand the real cause of the symptoms hence high risks for mistakes.