Health-Illness Continuum and Patient Experience Essay Exclusively

The health-illness continuum belongs to the number of concepts in healthcare that facilitate patient evaluations and allow generalizing on clients’ condition. Proposed more than forty years ago, the idea changed the ways to understand health and reduced unnecessary simplification in that regard. This essay examines the concept in question with reference to patient health and human experience and illustrates its applications to individuals’ health situation.

The continuum explains the meaning of wellbeing and establishes connections between its key components, such as physical, emotional, and mental states. Travis proposed the perspective in the 1970s, stating that it was not beneficial to patient outcomes when healthcare providers regarded health as a dichotomy (Penwell-Waines, Greenawald, & Musick, 2018). The dichotomous approach is limited in its ability to improve people’s health since the ability to eliminate disease and symptoms that reduce patients’ quality of life is seen as the final goal to be reached (Penwell-Waines et al., 2018). Within the framework of the health-illness continuum, the absence of conditions that affect everyday life is perceived as the neutral point between illness and health.

In a good measure, the elimination of disease is the responsibility of healthcare providers whose concerted efforts help patients to reach the mentioned neutral point. After that, the extent to which a person is conscious of his or her health becomes an important variable predicting further progress on the path of reaching high-level wellness (Grénman & Räikkönen, 2015). To pass the point of neutral health that presents false wellness, people are expected to research their personal health risks. Then, moving to high-level health involves engaging in self-study activities to be able to select healthy lifestyle practices that would be beneficial in specific situations (Grénman & Räikkönen, 2015). Therefore, as people move across the illness-wellness continuum, the degree of their responsibility for health outcomes tends to increase.

Summarizing the basic facts about the health-illness continuum, it is possible to say that its relevance to patient health is linked to the prevention of disease recurrence. More specifically, since the continuum goes beyond the dichotomous perspectives of health and illness, it provides new opportunities to implement measures that address health risks in advance (Grénman & Räikkönen, 2015). For instance, when a patient finally achieves the point of neutral health, he or she can be encouraged to move in a forward direction by focusing on self-education and lifestyle improvement. In many cases, this approach can help to reinforce the results of treatment and care provided by specialists.