Paper Example on Preventing Healthcare Associated Diseases

Introduction

The preventative approach has increasingly become a popular area in the healthcare sector to help prevent healthcare associated diseases. Such diseases can be prevented using various methods to educate the public with the aim of avoiding illnesses. This type of healthcare helps in improving the overall wellness of the people by informing the population and providing early treatment for illnesses to promote healthy lifestyles. The increasing number of people suffering from chronic diseases has resulted in an amplification of the role of nurses in preventing healthcare associated diseases. Nurses are always expected to improve the health of patients through preventive health care by encouraging people to seek preventative services like counseling, screening or precautionary medication. They can encourage a large group of people to practice healthy lifestyles which would prolong their lives.

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As a future nurse leader, I will encourage the public, particularly my patients to do regular exercise, preferably a 30 minute-exercise for at least five days weekly. The regular exercise helps in combating heart diseases, hypertension and other illnesses like stroke, diabetes as well as arthritis. It will also help them manage their weight. To prevent illnesses such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases or osteoarthritis, I will encourage my patients to control their weight by exercising and practicing healthy eating habits.

Additionally, I will encourage those who smoke and abuse drugs to avoid such behavior to prevent becoming addicted or risk of diseases such as lung cancer, emphysema, or other cancerous diseases. I will also promote moderate drinking habits by educating my patients about the effects of abusing alcohol, including early screening for liver diseases, high blood pressure or stroke. This will significantly increase the chances of disease prevention. To control existing diseases, I will work to identify the existing conditions in their early stages to modify the behavior of a person to control or reduce the effects of a particular ailment.

Preventative care includes a variety of techniques that identify, educate, prevent and treat diseases. I will regularly take up some preventative measures depending on the position of the healthcare facility I will be serving.

Primary Prevention Measures

Primary prevention involves taking up measures that help in providing individuals with the knowledge of preventing the onset of a targeted condition (Septimus et al. 2014). In this case, I will play the part of educating and counseling the community and the patients too to encourage positive health behaviors. I will engage in community immunization campaign and reinforce the use of seat belts to help prevent more suffering to avoid paying supplementary treatment cost.

Secondary Prevention Measures

This is a form of detecting the early stages of a disease. People with high-risk factors or preclinical diseases can be identified through screenings and regular care with the aim of preventing the onset of disease. Once identified, I will work with such patients to reduce and manage controllable risk to modify their lifestyle choices. I will also use early detection methods to find diseases in their early stages through effective treatment approaches like regular screening.

Tertiary Preventive Measure

This is a slightly different method of prevention that involves the treatment of the diseases exist in patients. At this point of care, I will help individuals execute a care plan and by modifying any new behavior necessary to improve their health conditions, thus preventing the adverse effects of future complications.

Examples of Disease Prevention

Traditionally, healthcare systems focused on curing disease. However, the system of today focuses more on effective prevention techniques. Approximately 1.7 million people in America die every year from chronic illnesses such as heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, stroke and other obstructive pulmonary diseases (Zingg et al. 2015). Therefore, nurses and other healthcare professionals are expected to work towards preventing such illnesses constantly.

Heart Disease

This is the leading cause of deaths in America thus becoming the focus of many healthcare professionals. There are some prevention programs that I will employ as a future nurse leader to educate the public on preventive measures to heart-related diseases. For instance, I will encourage and conduct my patients to engage in regular checks for blood pressure and cholesterol to prevent reaching dangerously high levels. Also, I will participate in educating the public about the symptoms of heart disease and heart attacks. Nonetheless, I will take part in improving emergency response to increase the rates of survival.

Guidelines for the best practice methods of treating and preventing heart diseases have been developed by organizations such as the American Heart Association to help educate and prevent cardiovascular diseases thus lowering the cost of healthcare services while improving the overall patient care.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases

One of the most common chronic obstructive pulmonary illnesses is lung disease which causes difficulty in breathing and progressively gets worse with time. These kinds of conditions can be managed using four different approaches; access and monitoring, risk factor reduction, stable management of COPD, and lastly potential relapse management. However, as a future nurse leader, I will recommend the use of primary prevention measures for this case. This is because COPDs can be caused through exposure to both indoor and outdoor pollution of air.

Patient and Family-Centered Care

Another critical characteristic to consider for the transformation of the healthcare system is the unwavering focus on the patient. Instead of the usual provider-centric care, I will adopt the patient and family-centered care approach for patients and families to assume the responsibility of self-management. Patient-centered care is a type of care that establishes a partnership between the patient and his family alongside other practitioners to ensure that decisions respect the needs, wants, and preferences of the patient. Besides, it ensures that the patient is educated and supported through whatever he needs to decide and participate in his care.

By practicing the patient-centered care approach, I will have acknowledged that patients and not providers know themselves better. I will have realized that quality care can only be achieved by integrating patients and families into making decisions and focusing on what is essential to the patient. Without this, the value is not delivered. Gone are the days when patients were told what to do; hence the care process can begin by asking what matters to the patient. The approach helps in defining the outcomes reported by patients or medical care which the patient directly defines.

Additionally, the shared understanding of what matters to the patient encourages the discussion on the efficiency of achieving the outcomes mentioned above. When patients are engaged in shared decision-making and care planning while putting patient-reported outcomes into consideration, they become more active in self-management. For this reason, I will partner with my patients to coach and educate them with the aim of strengthening their capacity towards achieving my objective. I will adopt the use of motivational interviews an action planning to help my patients with behavioral change strategically. With action plans and goals in mind, I will carry out the ongoing treatment plans, coach and counsel the patients to build self-confidence and remind them of preventive and follow-up care.

The factors that drive the transformation of healthcare include disparities, fragmentation, unsustainable costs, outcomes that are suboptimal, as well as access problems. The concerns of quality and price alongside the changing social demographics of disease-type have created an urgent need for change. Care and treatment for patients who suffer from chronic health conditions have become a significant concern. Several nations have taken incremental steps to achieve better quality healthcare services at lower costs. For this reason, I will position myself towards contributing to and leading the transformative changes that are currently occurring in the healthcare sector like patient-care and provider-based care as well as affordable and quality care.

The future of nursing that aims at changing and advancing the health sector affirms that nursing critically contributes to the reforms and demands of healthcare for a safe, quality patient-centered care that is accessible and affordable (Arnold et al. 2014). To deliver these outcomes as a future nurse leader, I will try performing a dramatically different nursing practice to deliver the expected level quality of care by passionately and proactively becoming taking part in the change. I will try to acquire new and advanced skills set on the wellness and population care as I focus on patient-centered care and quality improvement.

It is undoubted that nurses are charged with the responsibility of advancing health, improving care and increasing value. However, new ways will be required for critical thinking and practice. Therefore, it is important to shift your practice from focusing on disease episodes of care to improving health and care across the nation. It is also essential to partner with patients and their families to understand their social context before engaging them in care strategies.

Conclusion

To conclude, achieving this kind of transformation is not easy at the individual or system level. Therefore, as a nurse leader, I will be required to examine an individual's own knowledge and skills as well as his or her attitudes to find out whether I am fit for the change or not. On the other hand, organizations are required to analyze missions, goals, processes, leadership, partnerships, and other critical organizational elements. It is undoubting that the role of everyone is changing including the patient's as well as other healthcare professionals. Therefore, success can only come if all professionals in the healthcare sector come together to work as a team to transform and leverage the efforts of everyone working at the full scope of practice. To achieve patient-centered care, the collaboration of inter-professional coordinated care is required to give nursing an opportunity of shining.

References

Arnold, K. E., Avery, L., Bennett, R., Brinsley-Rainisch, K., Boyter, M., Coffin, N., ... & Herrera, R. (2014). National and state healthcare-associated infections progress report.

Septimus, E., Weinstein, R. A., Perl, T. M., Goldmann, D. A., & Yokoe, D. S. (2014). Approaches for preventing healthcare-associated infections: go long or go wide?. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 35(7), 797-801.

Zingg, W., Holmes, A., Dettenkofer, M., Goetting, T., Secci, F., Clack, L., ... & Pittet, D. (2015). Hospital organisation, management, and structure for prevention of health-care-associated infection: a systematic review and expert consensus. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 15(2), 212-224.