Health-Illness Importance to Health and Patient Care

Health-Illness Importance to Health and Patient Care

Assignment: The Wellness Spectrum.

The World Health Organization describes health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease. Health is determined by factors such as environment, education, genetics, and interpersonal relationships (GCU, 2018). This paper seeks to discuss the health-illness continuum and its relevance to patient care and describe a perspective of my current state of health with respect to the wellness spectrum.

Health-Illness Importance to Health and Patient Care

The Health-Illness Continuum, proposed by Ryan and Travis, illustrates health and illness along a continuum. The continuum is a diagrammatic representation with high-level health and wellness at the extreme right and high levels of illness and poor health and premature death at the extreme left (Ali et al., 2018). The middle of the continuum is regarded as the neutral zone since there is neither health nor illness. High levels of wellness are achieved through three steps, which are awareness, education, and growth (Ali et al., 2018). Signs, symptoms, and disability manifest in the left direction that leads to premature death.

Nurses must consider the health-illness continuum when caring for patients to enable them to move along the continuum towards high health levels. For instance, when they understand that health is achieved when a patient is effectively managed, the nurse will strive to provide quality, comprehensive care (GCU, 2018).  Besides, when nurses understand that poor health is caused by trauma and infections, they take interventions to promote patient safety (Svalastog et al., 2017). According to the continuum, persons moving towards high-level wellness are usually optimistic and have a positive view regardless of their existing health condition (Ali et al., 2018). On the other hand, persons in the left direction towards premature death are generally pessimistic and have negative perceptions of their health condition.