Holistic Care for the Chronically Ill Patients

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Aging Process and the Stigma of Aging
The Process of Coping and Tolerance to Distress
The Concept of Power and Helplessness in the Context of the Chronically Ill
Health Promotion
Holistic Practices
Insurance and Disposal of Health Care Resources
Conclusion
References

Introduction

Caring for a chronically ill relative by family members is a network of multifaceted activities and psychological adaptive mechanisms that aim to show empathy and meet the suffering relative. Relatives everywhere influence the patient’s life by scheduling meetings with them, choosing food and gifts for them, and giving them their time and attention to communicate. Emotional support from the relatives’ side is capable of underestimating the level of stress in self-management. Emotional investment has a beneficial effect on the process of adaptation to illness and the search for the most comfortable and at the same time productive life.

Aging Process and the Stigma of Aging

If a chronically sick relative is elderly, this can impose additional complications on acceptance and assistance to loved ones. The stigma of aging is usually not only internally psychological but also social. This implies that the patient not only experiences discomfort and an urge to realize his age but may also feel an increasing distance between himself and his family. In such situations, the patient’s level of suspicion and distrust can increase, and a sense of detachment and abandonment can grow. This leads to depressive effects of the state, which is implicitly an obstacle to a comfortable life in the future. That is why a high level of family support through communication, frequency of visits, and involvement in an activity, can objectively increase the level of the patient’s self-management, give them a feeling of support, but at the same time the full value and independence of their personality.

The Process of Coping and Tolerance to Distress

Among the traditional problem reactions that chronically ill patients faces are grief and its various stages with high emotional dispersion. The mechanisms of humility that patients use to adapt to their condition are in many ways similar to the strategies of coping with grief since they include similar parameters. Emotional responses such as disappointment, anger, and ignorance, as a result, are replaced by acceptance in the case of positive dynamics of psychological self-regulation (Russell et al., 2019). Impulsive and unhealthy habits, on the other hand, underestimate the tolerance to distress and, accordingly, minimize the future chances of a healthy life. Such tolerance is formed independently, yet with the help of medical personnel and the environment of loved ones, further priorities and quality of life of the patient depend on it.

The Concept of Power and Helplessness in the Context of the Chronically Ill

The situation of helplessness in the context of the chronically ill can grow not only because of the awareness of their illness but also because of the lack of proper support provided by the nurse. Once in the health care system, a person may receive an insufficient number of not only the proposed adaptive strategies but also real human attention. The time that nurses devote to patients should be allocated from the point of view of real psychological adjustment, so as not to make the patient feel helpless. It is on how the attending staff interacts with the patient that their willingness to receive help and seek support in their psyche depends.

A person in a situation of such heavy pressure should be able to find independent strength to come to terms with the fact of the disease and learn to live with it and resist it. The feeling of control over the disease or, accordingly, helplessness in front of it is largely formed through communication with medical personnel and loved ones. It also depends on the nurses how to communicate with relatives so that they cannot harm the patient with their braces.

There are specific methodologies for communication between nurses and patients that can give the patient’s relatives sufficient instructions on how to give them a sense of motivation and not downplay that feeling. It should also be noted that a feeling of helplessness may appear in a chronically ill person who is feeling like being torn out of the usual cultural context. In the situation of the modern world, a willingness for multicultural adaptation and the ability to show empathy towards a member of a minority should be completely natural in any nurse practitioner.

Health Promotion

Health promotion has historically been the primary concern of nurses focused on improving patient health, both physically and mentally. In the case of critically ill patients, promotion implies all kinds of support and provision of access to services that patients are still able to receive. These services include suitable and proper nutrition, social support, and relaxation programs. Particular attention should be paid to stress management programs which can be of different dimensions, both psychological and spiritual. Yoga and meditation in this aspect can be quite practically effective practices for perfecting the patient’s internal balance.

In general, maintaining the patient’s health at this stage of the end of life should imply the provision of a psychologically and socially comfortable life. It adapts to the primary and secondary changes that happened along with the disease and its development (Lubkin & Larsen, 2013). Thus, this practice turns out to be focused on activating human potential and giving it a positive realization even at critical moments in life, which is one of the main tasks of a health worker. Expressions of grief in the context of the chronically ill involve the ability of the nurse to convey information about the patient’s health in a way that makes sad news sound as traumatic as possible (Patinadan et al., 2020). The information itself should not serve as a reason for despair, but the search for hope.

Holistic Practices

In addition to the aforementioned health care practices that should help patients shape their psychological state more naturally, there are so-called holistic medical practices. The idea of a holistic relationship between a nurse and a terminally ill patient is to develop initially beneficial communication. The idea of centralization and balance plays a significant role in building such an attitude since it implies the constant presence of the nurse’s awareness of oneself at a particular moment of what is happening. From the feeling of being with the patient, the actual presence of a psychologically healing environment is created (Dossey & Keegan, 2013). Getting rid of critical and value judgments is also encouraged in a holistic approach, which rather aims to ensure that information is not perceived from a position of evaluation or judgment.

The spiritual dimension also seems to be extremely important in the psychology of holistic medicine. The idea of man as a unity of the physical and spiritual, of the presence of the sacred and eternal nature of human existence, does not seem like an exaggeration or a hoax in the face of real death. Therefore, understanding one’s physical life as just one of the stages of a grandiose magical journey does not seem to be a psychological manipulation when it comes to the psychological well-being of a doomed person. This holistic orientation allows you to find meaning in life and give a positive meaning to your finitude.

Insurance and Disposal of Health Care Resources

The enormous financial spread in the modern American healthcare system is caused by the high segmentation of the healthcare sector, which is not only a state institution but also a full-fledged market for services. The inequity in the distribution is due to the discrepancy between the ability to privately provide treatment to the upper stratum of the population and the need to receive free medical care for the poor (Sommers et al., 2017). Even though, in recent years, programs to help the poor have been actively developing, the middle class, with its absence of state subsidies at the high cost of medicine, is extremely vulnerable.

This problem could be solved by the state federalization of most commercial medical institutions. The creation of a clearer and less capitalist hierarchy in the health sector could normalize the receipt of aid and make it less tied to the financial well-being of the individual. In the context of chronically ill patients, federal intervention is required at the level of creating an initiative program, including funding from the state. By attracting volunteers and professionals from the fields of medicine, nursing, and psychology to a single program, it will be possible to create a flexible but unified support mechanism for the chronically ill.

Conclusion

In the course of work, the main psychological complications experienced by a chronically ill patient were considered. Various mechanisms for positive impact on the patient have been proposed, and strategies for humility that the nurse and family can suggest. Likely, the search for economic equity in the allocation of funds for treatment through government intervention could help develop a unified program to support the chronically ill.

References

Dossey, B. M., & Keegan, L. (2013). Holistic nursing: A handbook for practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Lubkin, I. M., & Larsen, P. D. (2013). Chronic illness: Impact and intervention. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Patinadan, P. V., Tan-Ho, G., Choo, P. Y., & Ho, A. H. Y. (2020). Resolving anticipatory grief and enhancing dignity at the end-of life: A systematic review of palliative interventions. Death Studies, 1-14. Web.

Russell, B. S., Lincoln, C. R., & Starkweather, A. R. (2019). Distress tolerance intervention for improving self-management of chronic conditions: A systematic review. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 37(1), 74-86. Web.

Sommers, B. S., Gawande, A. A., & Baicker, K. (2017). Health insurance coverage and health: What the recent evidence tells us. The New England Journal of Medicine, 377(6), 588-593. Web.

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