Description
describe and evaluate 2 holistic self-care practices you believe will improve your overall vitality & directly or indirectly affect your PHC.
Explanation & Answer
It is imperative that nurse practitioners (NPs) are aware of the barriers patients with chronic illnesses face when learning to manage their own diseases and treatment. By helping to overcome barriers to self-care, practitioners can improve patient outcomes and empower patients to take ownership of their treatment.
Although unique self-care behaviors are required to self-manage some chronic conditions, most share certain features. Long-term conditions require daily attention because a "cure" is not the goal. Instead, management aims to reduce the disease burden of the condition. There is also a high comorbidity among chronic conditions. About two-thirds of individuals with diabetes also have hypertension.3 The leading chronic conditions worldwide, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes, share common risk factors of smoking, inactivity, poor diet, and environmental exposures.
Alongside the growing disease burden of chronic conditions, there is an increased interest in the role of self-care to control disease progression; however, this approach presents a number of challenges.4 Patient education about specific disease conditions is not sufficient to inspire sustained behavioral changes necessary for ongoing self-management. For example, patients with diabetes make decisions that affect glycemic control every day, while contact with healthcare providers is usually brief and periodic.5 With high comorbidity among major chronic conditions, lifestyle skills that support healthy behaviors have benefits beyond a single diagnosis. Further, many low-resource settings not only have a severe shortage of healthcare workers, but also are part of healthcare systems that do not provide continuity of care or basic equipment needed to monitor care and disease outcomes, such as BP cuffs or weight scales
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