Understanding the Health-illness Continuum and its Relevance to Patient Care

Benchmark – Human Experience across the Health-Illness Continuum
Name
Institution
Due Date
Benchmark – Human Experience across the Health-Illness Continuum
While thinking about health, many people do not consider it as something that is continual. People take note of the times they are sick, and often, these moments necessitate a visit to a doctor. For some people, it matters little the doctor they see as long as they get better. However, it is crucial to understand that there is a need to ensure continuity and consistency in healthcare.
Health-Illness Continuum and its Importance
The health-illness continuum mainly represents the idea that healthcare is never in a constant state but keeps changing with time. This notion of healthcare challenges the traditional belief of assessing a person’s wellness by checking for any signs and symptoms inconsistent with what qualifies as healthy. The health-illness continuum speaks to a holistic approach to assessing well-being by considering the different changes that every person experiences. These changes range from periods of good health or wellness and all its components of healthcare, including physical, emotional, social, spiritual, mental, intellectual, and environmental health, to death (Stoewen, 2017). Such a holistic approach helps paint a clearer picture of a person’s health while also informing the appropriate actions for better healthcare.
Having this perspective is crucial because it helps ensure no gaps while providing care for patients. When care is episodic and limited to the few encounters between providers and patients, the chances are high gaps will develop. Gaps are quite costly in the healthcare sector and expose patients to recurring healthcare issues while also leading to greater expenditure in healthcare (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). There needs to be a connection between the time a patient is in hospital and after they get discharged. A patient’s daily decisions need to be monitored, and the gaps that could exist, for example, knowledge gaps, be filled. People should understand their role in their health and how their decisions affect their place in the health-illness continuum.
Aside from the above, this perspective helps in the development of a leaner and seamless model of care with an emphasis on the transitions a patient makes from one stage to another. For example, if a patient has had past illnesses or genetic conditions that predispose them to later healthcare challenges, the available system of care should uncover such. Transitioning from one setting to another can lead to a breakthrough or a disaster, especially if there is limited information on the healthcare history of a patient. As indicated by Junge-Maughan, Moore, and Lipsitz (2020), poor care transition can lead to incomplete follow-up care, and the result of this would be medication errors and grave patient outcomes.
Importance of Understanding the Health-Illness Continuum as a Provider
As a provider, understanding the health-illness continuum brings to focus the importance of follow-up and shifting care from being episodic to a lifetime call to offer care. As indicated, the health-illness continuum leads to the adopt...