Essay Example on Public Health: Patient - Healthcare Professional Engagement

The patient/health professional engagement is very important when it comes to finding solutions to an illness that a patient is grappling with. A patient/health professional engagement does play an important role when it comes to the success of healthcare. A meaningful engagement between patients and healthcare professionals would go a long way in ensuring that a patient is accorded appropriate healthcare. A meaningful patient/health professional engagement is important when it comes to improving healthcare. Studies have revealed that the more engagement between patients and healthcare professionals, the more likely better healthcare outcomes will be delivered. Patient/health professional engagement is often at the center of initiatives that are aimed to ensure more patient-centered healthcare (Currie et al., 2015).

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Patient/health professional engagement could be defined as a desire and capacity to actively chose to participate in healthcare in a manner that is uniquely appropriate to individuals working in a healthcare setting for the purpose of maximizing healthcare outcomes. There are often steps that are taken by both patients and healthcare professionals to improve the engagement. How the two players interact plays a major role when it comes to ensuring that healthcare outcomes are improved. The environment or tools involved in the engagement have a role to play when it comes to healthcare outcomes (Legare et al., 2010).

For maximization of the potential benefit of patient/healthcare professional engagement, the process must be personalized. A patient must be able to access information and resources that would engage that the quality of engagement is improved. There should be an existence of a supportive relationship between patients and healthcare professionals. The supportive relationship will play a major role in ensuring that healthcare options are evaluated, and the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals is sustained towards meeting shared goals (Vaismoradi et al., 2015).

There have been concerns that care coordination in healthcare settings is fragmented. Therefore, it is important for patient/healthcare professional engagement to be strengthened to ensure coordination in a healthcare setting is improved. The engagement will also play a major role in ensuring that appointment, scheduling, care access and patient-healthcare professional communication is improved (Hovey et al., 2010).

An improved patient/healthcare professional engagement would play a major role in bringing about improved healthcare outcomes. The improved engagement will play a major role in improving patient satisfaction and patients experiences in a healthcare setting. Measures of improved healthcare outcomes include improved care coordination, improved patient safety, reduced healthcare costs and development of best healthcare practices. An improved engagement will also play a major role in improving communication between patients and healthcare professionals. The patient/healthcare professional engagement should be in a confidential and professional manner. Information that a patient divulges to a health professional should be treated with utmost sensitivity by a healthcare professional (Atherton et al., 2012).

Long hard haul

The long hard haul in this context implies that finding a solution to an illness affecting a patient will involve a long period of hard work where both the patient and the health professional will work in concert to ensure that a solution to the illness is arrived at. Attitudes of both the patient and the health professional will play a major role towards coming up with an appropriate solution to the illness. Attitudes are of crucial importance when it comes to nursing. Attitudes play a major role in helping us understand how issues and processes in healthcare are perceived. Attitudes help us to determine what people perceive as relevant, appropriate and good. There is a need for healthcare professionals to understand attitudes so that they may provide healthcare that is collaborative and patient-centered (Kittay, 2013).

A health professional should have a good attitude that would act as an impetus towards finding an apt solution to a problem that afflicts a patient. A healthcare professional can use attitude towards enabling patients to revisit problematic behaviors or problems that seem less effective. A health professionals attitude is important when it comes to patient safety. Attitude is vital when it comes to effecting change. Therefore, a health professional should have an attitude that embraces healthcare procedures that have been proven so as to enhance patient safety and patient care. A health professionals negative attitude could be attributed to the way he or she was brought up since childhood. It is important to establish whether a health professional established a bad attitude during his or her healthcare training. Identification of the point in which a health professional started to develop a negative attitude would play a major role in coming up with a right intervention that would ensure that the health professional changes his or her negative attitude to positive. Health professionals need to take extreme remedies that would ensure that they do not needlessly cause harm to patients (Chauvette & Alexander, 2004).

While a health professional should respect individual rights, the onus is on a health professional to promote positive attitudes so as to have an effective and efficient way of working with a patient. A positive attitude by both a healthcare professional and a patient plays a major role in ensuring quality healthcare. A positive attitude by a healthcare professional play a major role in ensuring that the professional treats a patient with respect and kindness. Treating a patient with respect and kindness plays a major role in ensuring respect for patient rights and safety. A positive attitude plays a major role in ensuring that healthcare professionals and patients work in a collaborative manner. Patient feedback plays a major role in ensuring the improvement of healthcare standards (Cutler, 2010).

The long hard haul in healthcare involves ensuring that a patient receives holistic healthcare that would ensure that the patient recovers from an illness. Time if of the essence with regard to ensuring that a patient receives holistic healthcare. A healthcare professional should develop a good relationship with a patient that would ensure that the patient discloses to him or her about their healthcare status. The healthcare professional will have to determine specific needs that a patient should be accorded to ensure that the patient quickly recovers from the illness. A healthcare professional should understand a patient and his or her form of communication (Apostolopoulos et al., 2014).

Illness as a construction

Healthcare professionals should make patients understand that illness is a construction. Illness behavior is often shaped by socio-cultural factors and social-psychological factors. For instance, the culture of poverty plays a major role in the development of social and psychological traits among individuals who experience it. Traits such as an inability to delay gratification, dependence, and fatalism and lower values for health are associated with poverty. Poor individuals who have to work for their survival have a habit of denying sickness unless the sickness brings significant functional incapacity. Different cultures often have different ways of defining and interpreting health and illness (Mattingly, 2008).

A patients demographic status has a role to play when it comes to the development of illness. A persons marital status may influence the persons illness behavior. Most of the time, married individuals require fewer healthcare services because they tend to be more attuned to preventive care and also utilize other services that boost their health status. Gender may play an important role when it comes to illness behavior. Studies have revealed that women are more likely than men to seek medical help for any health problem that affects them. Women tend to be more self-protective of their health status than men (Brown, 1995).

A patients past experiences play a major role when it comes to illness behavior. A persons social and cultural background has a role to play when it comes to the mediation of illness behavior. Parents avoidance behaviors have a role to play when it comes to encouraging their children to exhibit the same avoidance behaviors. The way parents respond to their childrens health complains plays a role in how the children will respond to health complaints in future (Anderson, 1991).

Disease as imposition

Disease as imposition means that most of the diseases and illnesses that patients suffer stem from their activities, their behavior, environmental factors or factors beyond their control. A person imposes disease on himself by engaging in behaviors that are a threat to his health. Health promotion is important when it comes to dealing with a disease as an imposition (Paraska, 2012).

Health promotion refers to a process whereby individuals are given an opportunity to increase control over their health and at the same time improve their health. Health promotion takes cognizance of many factors. For individuals to reach a state of physical, social and mental well-being, there must be an identification of health needs of those individuals. Health is an everyday life resource. In health promotion, there is an emphasis on personal and social resources as well as the available physical capacities. There are perquisites for a human beings healthy living. Food, shelter, and peace are one of the most important resources when it comes to improving a persons health (McLeroy, 1989). For individuals to attain a healthy status, there should be advocacy in communities for improved health. Advocacy will play a major role in ensuring that political, economic, social, environmental and cultural factors in communities favor improved health in societies. Health promotion also aims at reducing disparities in health status in societies. Disparities in health status in societies can best be addressed by according individuals equal opportunities that will go a long way in ensuring that they achieve their full potential. Legal authorities should play a major role in ensuring that health is promoted in societies (Bandura, 2004).

The reflective impulse

The reflective impulse in healthcare plays a major role in determining how a healthcare professional can make decisions that are both motivational and volitional. Behavior is a function of both active decisions and conscious reflection. Decisions in healthcare are often made taking cognizant of perceived utility, risk, capability, outcomes, social influence, and intention. However, a majority of human behavior is influenced by the environment without taking cognizance of active reflection in decision making. There are many non-conscious influences that determine human behavior. There are also well established reflective processes that determine human behavior. Dual process models suggest that behavior is often an interplay of two cognitive processes that operate in a parallel manner. The processes are a reflective process and a cognitive process (Taylor, 2011).

Reflection and impulse also play a major role in determining human behavior among patients. Reflective impulse involves taking part in deliberate and reflective thoughts and actions that are caused by spontaneous impulses. Reflective impulse requires motivation and is typically operated in a conscious form. Intentionality has been established as a prototypical feature of reflective decision-making proce...