NRS 420 Benchmark – Human Experience Across the Health-Illness Continuum
Research the health-illness continuum and its relevance to patient care. In a 750-1,000-word paper, discuss the relevance of the continuum to patient care and present a holistic perspective of your current state of health in relation to the wellness spectrum by including the following GCU:
- Examine the health-illness continuum and discuss why this perspective is important to consider in relation to health and the human experience when caring for patients.
- Explain how understanding the health-illness continuum enables you, as a health care provider, to better promote the value and dignity of individuals or groups and to serve others in ways that promote human flourishing and are consistent with the Christian worldview.
- Reflect on your overall state of health from a holistic perspective. Discuss what behaviors support or detract from your health, well-being, and self-care. Explain where you currently fall on the health-illness continuum. Describe how you might improve your self-care practices and overall wellness using evidence-based strategies GCU.
- Discuss at least two specific options and resources available to you in your community or virtually to help you move toward wellness on the health-illness spectrum. Describe how these would assist in moving you toward wellness (managing a chronic disease, recovering from an illness, self-actualization, etc.) GCU.
You are required to cite a minimum of three peer-reviewed sources to complete this assignment. Sources must be published within the past 5 years, appropriate for the assignment criteria, and relevant to nursing practice.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.
Benchmark Information
This benchmark assesses the following programmatic competency:
RN-BSN
10.1: Understand the human experience across the health-illness continuum.
American Association of Colleges of Nursing Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education
This assignment aligns to AACN Core Competencies 10.1, 2.3 ,3.1 ,4.2, 8.4.
NRS 420 Benchmark – Human Experience Across the Health-Illness Continuum Example
The Health-illness continuum, sometimes called the wellness-illness continuum, illustrates the concept of wellbeing, including mental and emotional aspects of health. It was first described in 1972 by a physician, Dr. John W. Travis. Some items of literature refer to this continuum simply as the healthcare continuum. Graphically, this continuum’s main paradigms include optimal wellness, neutral point, illness, or even death.
Nurses apply the concepts from the healthcare continuum to manage and care for their patients. Towards the right of the continuum, patients’ condition improves as they strive to achieve wellness. Moving towards the left direction means that the patient’s health deteriorates and the chances of loss of life are likely. Nursing care, therefore, revolves around moving patients’ condition toward the right-hand side of the continuum.
Importance of Understanding the Health-Illness Continuum in My Care Provision
The definition of health varies with various perspectives. The client’s understanding of health and illness may be discrete, so the delineation of optimal health from illness is identifiable. From my perspective, health and illness exist on a continuum, so the absence of illness does not necessarily mean health. This understanding is relevant to my care provision because all patient care services I would provide must be targeted towards moving the patient’s health status towards the right of the continuum.
In the current digital society, clients can access health and health-related information from various sources alongside care professionals’ advice (Hilty et al., 2018). However, the authenticity of this information cannot be ascertained. The application of this information to their lifestyles is vital in health promotion and maintenance. It is, therefore, my role as a nursing care provider to sieve this kind of information so that the patient applies the appropriate information to appropriate health practices.
Understanding the factors influencing health is critical in deciding what care professionals provide clients. Knowledge of the determinants of health is essential not only to healthcare providers but also to patients. Typically, the public perceives the nurse as the promoter of life and healing in care provision. However, our roles and responsibilities go beyond health promotion. Alongside health promotion, I, as a nurse, should promote illness prevention at the individual, community, or group levels.
Nursing interventions, therefore, target patients at all stages of the health-illness continuum and aim to move all of them toward optimal health. Thus, promoting human dignity and the restoration of value is the overall endpoint of nursing care. Nurses can make this possible by modifying the physical environment, mental health and thought processes, and the social ways of life (Svalastog et al., 2017).
Overall State of Health Reflection
The status of a person on the wellness-illness continuum is a labile state not fixed by any paradigm. External, intrinsic, or both factors influence paradigm shifts. However, the absence of illness does not suggest wellness (Rovesti et al., 2018). The balance between wellness and illness is, therefore, indeterminate. The shift from optimal health, neutral point, to illness and back is not unidirectional and, therefore, reversible. However, end-of-life situations are primarily irreversible and can only be sustained palliatively.
My current health status oscillates between optimal health and neutral point. My behaviors and lifestyle primarily determine my position on the continuum. Social behaviors such as occasional intake of alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages predispose my status to shift to the left of the continuum. Whatever we do for fun, pleasure, or recreation is to some extent responsible for disease in our lifetime. In most cases, illness is determined by the presence of disease symptoms and signs. Occult etiologies in disease pathogenesis exist in almost everyone, but cannot be used to classify them as ill.
Options and Resources Available for Health Sustenance
Health maintenance and promotion are products of timely health prevention. Preventing health progression to the left of the continuum, or towards illness, helps sustain quality human health. Notably, prevention resources vary extensively by stage of prevention. Primary prevention targets individuals with optimal health and neutral points. This is the group where I belong.
Resources for primary prevention include behavior change, adequate health education, immunizations, and safe health practices. This type of prevention works well for this group because they risk acquiring ill health involving preventable conditions at some point in their lives. Secondary prevention resources are appropriate for exposed individuals who may have developed ill health but have not yet been ascertained. For this group, screening is required to identify the problem and prevent further progression toward the illness on the health-illness continuum.
Conclusion
The Health-illness continuum is a model clinicians use to explain, describe, and provide care to their clients. Depending on extrinsic and intrinsic health influencers, an individual’s health status may change at any time. For this reason, timely prevention is the key to reversing the negative paradigm shift in the healthcare continuum. As a nurse, I not only endeavor to provide high-quality health and wellness guidance to my patients but also aspire to lead a life that ensures my good health.
References
Hilty, D.M., Turvey, C., & Hwang, T. (2018). Lifelong learning for clinical practice: How to leverage technology for telebehavioral health care and digital continuing medical education. Current Psychiatry Reports, 20(15). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-018-0878-y
Rovesti, M., Fioranelli, M., Petrelli, P., Satolli, F., Roccia, M. G., Gianfaldoni, S., Tchernev, G., Wollina, U., Lotti, J., Feliciani, C., & Lotti, T. (2018). Health and illness in history, science and society. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 6(1), 163–165. https://doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2018.056
Svalastog, A. L., Donev, D., Kristoffersen, N. J., & Gajović, S. (2017). Concepts and definitions of health and health-related values in the knowledge landscapes of the digital society. Croatian Medical Journal, 58(6), 431–435. https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2017.58.431
Shadow Health: Focused Exam: Abdominal Pain
In this assignment you will conduct a focused exam on a patient presenting with abdominal pain. Interview the patient, assess the related body systems, and then complete post-exam activities. Within the Shadow Health platform, complete Focused Exam: Abdominal Pain. On average, this assignment should 25 minutes to complete. Students may need additional time.
You can attempt this assignment as many times as you would like. After completing this focused exam, you will be awarded a Digital Clinical Experience (DCE) score. The DCE score will appear on your Lab Pass which you will submit to the classroom drop box. The DCE score will be used as your percentage grade for this assignment.
You are not required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.
Shadow Health: Focused Exam: Chest Pain
In this GCU you will conduct a focused exam on a patient presenting with chest pain and requiring emergency intervention. Interview the patient, assess the related body systems, and then complete post-exam activities. Within the Shadow Health platform, complete Focused Exam: Chest Pain. On average, this assignment should take 75 minutes to complete. Students may need additional time.
You can attempt this assignment as many times as you would like. After completing this focused exam, you will be awarded a Digital Clinical Experience (DCE) score. The DCE score will appear on your Lab Pass which you will submit to the classroom drop box. The DCE score will be used as your percentage grade for this GCU.
You are not required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.
