NRS434: Week 5: 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 perspective of your current state of health in relation to the wellness spectrum. Include the following:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Reflect on your overall state of health. Discuss what behaviors support or detract from your health and well-being. Explain where you currently fall on the health-illness continuum.
  4. Discuss the options and resources available to you 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.).

Solution:

Human Experience Across The Health Illness Continuum

One’s health is in constant change, moving back and forth from health to illness. The health or illness state is rarely constant. Today one may wake up feeling healthy and great but then develop a stomachache in the afternoon and regain health in the evening. In this regard, this paper discusses the health-illness continuum and its significance to patient care. It also discusses how understanding the health-illness continuum helps healthcare providers to provide care and reflection on my state of health. The resources and options to help in moving towards wellness are also discussed.

Health-Illness Continuum in Patient Care and Human Experience

The health-illness continuum presents the change process. In this, a person experiences different health and illness states which vary from extremely healthy to death, fluctuating throughout their lives (Henriques, 2015). Ryan and Travis, in developing this model, has it that the Health-Illness Continuum describes one’s health and illness through a continuum in which a high degree of health and wellness is on one extreme end, and on another end, a high degree of poor health and illness, including death (Capponi, 2019). The neutral zone, the central point of the continuum, neither depicts health nor illness. Clients shift along the continuum from health to illness due to trauma, infection, injury, etc. and upon a successful treatment, from illness to health. Thus, in simple terms, the health-illness continuum demonstrates how an individual can shift from preventive to hospital care, to rehabilitation, and then to general medicine (Svalastog, Donev, Kristoffersen, & Gajović, 2017)….Click link below to purchase full tutorial at $10