This essay discusses the concept of health-illness continuum and its relevance in health and human experiences caring for patients. Health-illness continuum consists of a “scale where you measure your health” to determine core factors that influence an individual’s state of health both emotionally and mentally. Health-illness continuum takes into account the diverse features including behavior, stress levels, mental state, and perceptions towards to health of an individual. This culminates in the overall state of health of an individual through maintaining a sober state of the mind and control of emotional stresses (Singh, 2020). The utilization of health-illness continuum helps in regulating personal behaviors and experiences as diverse issues such as body functions, previous illnesses through an individual’s lifetime, educational background, eating behaviors, and past experiences influence the state of health. Therefore, this posits a fundamental approach in maintaining health state of individuals through taking advance precautions and being informed on the health history (Cross, 2020).
Health-illness Continuum and its Importance and Relevance to Health and Human Experiences in Caring for Patients
Health-illness continuum plays an integral role in caring for patients. The utilization of health-illness continuum scale provides an outline of an individual’s health history, their choices and behavior, and the degree of stress. This is vital to determine the impact of emotional and mental state on the overall health of an individual. The scale of measure on an individual’s health taking into account past experiences and health conditions enables health professionals make informed decisions on an individual (van Erp Taalman Kip & Hutschemaekers, 2018). This is vital to outline the dos and don’ts and practices to utilize in providing patient care. The scale of measurement provides extensive knowledge of an individual’s state of health and various approaches to caring of the patient.
How Understanding of Health-illness Continuum Enables One as a Health Care Provider Promote Better Performance
The understanding of health-illness continuum by a health care provider is crucial towards promoting better performance. This denotes that, as a health care provider, you understand the patient’s health history enabling one make the best decisions. The capacity to make the best decisions is fundamental to caring for the patients as you prescribe and offer quality advice to the patient. The extensive knowledge on the patient appeals to the emotional and mental state of valuing the patient (Kishan, 2020). This leads to positive beliefs and perception on the patient. As a result, higher levels of patient satisfaction are bound to be experienced prompting the patients to recover quickly. Furthermore, the health-illness continuum provides a roadmap of the best approaches and choices to make on the patient. Thus, providing the best care possible to the patient (Salmond & Echevarria, 2017).
Overall State of Health
Currently, my state of health can be presented to be stable and in good condition. This is informed by the fact that, I rarely get sick, have a healthy record of past illnesses, and I am cautious on my diet and physical exercises. On daily basis, physical exercises are a major aspect of my life as I spare at least thirty minutes to one hour a day for rigorous activities. This is vital in maintaining better health conditions. Also, in food consumption and maintaining diet, I am very strict to consuming the right foods rich in nutrients such as fruits, vegetables, cereals, dry grains, among others. Healthy eating and exercising is a major part of maintaining a good state of health.
Nevertheless, from time to time, I have fallen into the temptations of consuming junk food such as fries, roast meat, fast foods, and carbonated drinks. This is a major health risk, but as a human being, earthly things without consideration of their implications become a major test.
In overall, I stand at a high-level wellness in the health-illness continuum scale as I am highly informed on what to eat, how to exercise, capacity to maintain positive attitude and beliefs on health, control of mental stresses, and being generally optimistic (Kishan, 2020). Therefore, it presents a state where I am in control of my health and aware of the impact of every decision I make towards my future state of health.
Options and Resources Available to Help Move Toward Wellness on the Health-illness Spectrum
As a person who comes from a middle-income family, I have numerous resources at my disposal to maintaining a high health wellness and move towards higher health-illness spectrum. Such include financial resources to maintain good diets and indulge in spending quality time in physical exercises. In addition, this helps in maintaining mental stresses to the lowest levels possible. As a result, this is critical to maintain emotional and mental wellness. Thus, in the long run, move towards a better health-illness spectrum.
