Moving Toward Preventive Education

Patients suffering from chronic conditions like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) and diabetes type 2 need alternative clinical from the routine supportive care. This is because a number of issues will either hasten or slow down their recovery process. Patients come from a diverse array of background; this could play a pivotal role to determine their ability to afford care accorded by the health providers. It is from this perspective that a more universal model of addressing their issues needs reconsideration and application to cut across for the benefits of all irrespective of their background and other socio-economic factors. The first part of this paper gives a description of the benefits that comes with changes, which drives nurses and other important institutions to take a paradigm shift in the mode of offering special services to these patients. This involves moving from routine supportive care to a more dynamic preventive or patient education model. The other segment seeks to clarify on the necessary insight for these institutions to provide education in preventive measures.

Changes helping nurses/organizations transit from supportive to preventive/patient education

It is important to identify barriers that hinder effective provision of education that facilitates self care to such patients. The society is becoming dynamic and keeps evolving at rather a faster rate than what most people do anticipates. This comes with a change in environmental factors, these would have an impact in the health of people and more so those suffering from chronic conditions. In this context, diabetes type 2 becomes even chronic once one rejuvenates the condition by the exposure factors. Treatment alone would not help these patients to live a fruitful life; the desire to make the patient dictate this lasting impression on the aftermath would ostensibly have a positive influence. Augmentation of education with low cost medication would go a great mile in reducing the entire cost that would otherwise be too costly for that specific family (Peeples & Jeffrie 2007). Nurses should learn various methods of aligning effects of environmental factors to the treatment regimes for their patients. In fact, knowing the exact hardship a patient experience would make them design appropriate method of offering education, which is specific to the predicaments and the conditions under examination. Patients will have knowledge of how to control their glycemic levels and glycosylated haemoglobin. This will help patients and the health provider address all the possible problems that are likely to hinder effective self management (McGowan, 2011).

Cultural inclination has of late proved to be a major determinant of some chronic conditions in a majority of patients. Evidenced based nursing champions the need of all professionals to learn the culture of their patients to improve on their service delivery. This will help in effective integration of the clients and the provider to share their problems and solutions amicably. Social norms seem to have a great impact in patients taking a stand concerning a certain disease condition, especially the chronic ones. Assimilation of this aspect to spearhead for self care would prove productive at the end. Some of these cultures hinders effective management of diabetes type 2 and COPD, this could happen because of some traditional believes and norms that restrict or encourages habits that reverberates the condition (Hawthorne et al., 2008). These revolve around intent, norms, behaviours, and attitude. It is thus important for institutions and nurses to take interest in learning some of these believes before they can sit back and start educating the patients. Learning patients’ cultural values would build confidence and improve the relationship between the patient and the health care provider. The aftermath of this will be positive response from those suffering. This is also true with COPD, which has to do more with lifestyle conditions, is a nurse gets rooted into the lifestyle condition of the community; he/she would be in a better position of addressing the need to refrain from some uncouth behaviour that worsens their wellbeing (Hawthorne et al., 2008; Ontario Lung Association, 2007).

The need to carry out a transformation from the current disease specific intervention to patients cantered-treatment planning would pave way for this transition. A diabetic patient made to appreciate the importance of embracing survival skills in which he/she is able to count the carbohydrate level in the blood, administering insulin and monitoring the blood sugar level would help reduce the possibilities of emergency cases likely to occur during abrupt changes in these parameters, this should also go well with COPD patient who would be in a position to sense symptoms and apply relevant technical skill (technique of inhaling as directed by the nurse) (McGowan, 2011; Ontario Lung Association, 2007). Very few patients can manage their conditions because of some hindering forces, these includes distress, ignorance, and lack of empowerment. Institution of these would help nurses and institutions to effectively make the transition from supportive to preventive mode of health care.

Advancement in novel scientific innovations where patients would not need to undergo checkups and examination at health care centres allows remote evaluation of patients. Telemedicine is making the field of medicine take a new twist in terms of treatment, diagnosis, and examination (Joseph, 2006). Patients can remotely monitor their blood sugar levels, administer insulin, count the level of carbohydrates, and assess their breathing patterns without the help of nurses. This would however, need immense knowhow because the important part would be on the patient rather than the nurse to deduce when a special consultation is important. Nurses would need to address their patients on the possible outcomes from both diabetic and COPD conditions in cases of emergency (Ontario Lung Association, 2007). This would go alongside a prescription and treatment regime if need be. The community at large would have an impression in this aspect for its success. Support from the community and their health care systems may have the best support for this, this is because aspects like integration of behaviours that defines lifestyle, strategies that makes one cope, and treatment decisions are very important in this regard (Joseph, 2006).

The last part that could help nurses and organizations move from supportive care to preventive/patient education measures for persons with chronic illnesses is using encouraging dialogue that points the susceptibility in terms of severity of the condition to the patient. In this context, it is paramount to let the diabetic patients and those suffering from COPD understand the consequences of these conditions and how they can be valuable assets in helping to curb the consequences (Peeples & Jeffrie 2007).

Theories, concepts, strategies, knowledge, and insights useful for an institution to provide education on preventive measures

The most important theory in this context is cultural, which emanates into a wider perspective to dictate the success of staging education for diabetes type 2 and COPD conditions. Each community values the traditional doctrines that define its existence. They define their healthy eating habits, taking of medication, coping process, and finding amicable solutions to their problems. It is thus important to get a bigger picture of what they think about certain conditions before deciding on the most appropriate method of instituting educational process (Peeples & Jeffrie 2007). Studies shows that institutions that have tentacles spread at working places, homes, and community levels would be at a better position to offer educational programs for these conditions that those whose sole functions is to provide medication in specific locations. The model represented in the diagram below shows how well connection with the community can make educational measure a success. This should however, involve the goodwill of all stakeholders. At the very top, it is true that both the community and health care system needs one another. These two would provide the services of educating the patients concurrently. The aftermath is a positive outcome in functional and clinical healthcare (Peeples & Jeffrie 2007; Sterlund, 2009). The healthcare providers falls in the healthcare systems while patients falls in the community, for effective provision of services the former would need to learn their language and culture in general, understand their perception on the various disease condition before embarking of educational process. For instance, this is crucial to understand certain habits like smoking before one commences teaching on the effects; this is done to win the confidence of the targeted people.

A model showing the connection between the community and the healthcare system

The institution would also need to come close and identify other aspects like socio-economic and environmental factors affecting the community before designing on the appropriate mode of approaching them in their educational segment. This knowhow is pivotal for inclusion of relevant issues that may have a rejuvenating influence on either COPD or diabetes type 2 (Sterlund, 2009). Identification of such stressors would form the basic underline in making the institution come up with emergency measures before carrying out their goal. The strategy would lure as many people into adopting the methods championed as alternative measures of controlling these conditions.

Conclusively, this paper unravels the possible means of bringing changes that could help nurses/organizations take a transition from the current supportive to patient education, these have effects of making the patient take an active role in controlling his/her wellbeing. One of these options involves learning their cultural orientation before deciding to educate, this will build relationship between the client and the nurse and eventually improve service delivery. This strategy is important because it cuts the disconnection between the patient and the nurse/institution. Community intervention also has a very significant role in helping effective implementation of educational programs (Sterlund, 2009).