PROPM 2 WEEK 8 PEER RESPONDS

PEER 1: Healthy behaviors may reduce or prevent morbidity and mortality. A healthy diet, for instance, helps to prevent many diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and cancer. Motivating patients to change their health behavior requires extensive education. Family is also essential for those who have been diagnosed with chronic diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. In chronic illness, more top social support, especially family, most commonly measured as the amount of practical and emotional support that patients perceive, has been linked with improved self-management behavior, improved disease control, and lower mortality risk (Jeter et al. 2019) . Having such support systems is beneficial in helping patients follow a physician’s recommendations. It also can provide practical support, such as rides to the doctor or pharmacy, going to the supermarket. The encouragement of family can motivate people who have been ill to take steps to be more active and get back to work more quickly than those who do not have reliable support. Over the years, nurses and clinicians have frequently expressed frustration about their capacity to influence patient behavior. These mostly happen when they see the negative impact of that behavior on their patients’ health outcomes. Simple reactions such as a patient’s difficulty quitting smoking, following a recommended diet, or sticking to a prescribed treatment plan often frustrate both the clinician and the patient. Both nurses and clinicians recognize that patients’ behaviors and adherence to treatment plans are essential to producing positive health outcomes, especially among patients with chronic illness. Patient compliance is a challenging issue for families and medical professionals. Our desire to help patients succeed is often derailed when they do not do their part. In response to this very issue, we can create a positive and supportive environment in our relationship or household to support recovery. We can spend time with our loved ones and reassure them that we genuinely care. Other things we can do include encouraging them to set simple, achievable goals. We can break their big goals into smaller ones and present them one at a time. When they visit their clinicians for follow-ups, we can encourage then to get educational handouts or brochures relating to a variety of health conditions and promote the clinicians to highlight the crucial statistics that relate directly to them. As families, we can make community connections. Communities are filled with services that can benefit our loved ones and provide the necessary information to get connected. Also hosting workshops that educate patients on how to live with their chronic conditions However, motivating patients to improve behaviors is accompanied by elements such as willingness to avoid illness, a belief that an individual health behavior will prevent disease, creating a certain degree of motivation for change, and finally converting that motivating into action (Jeter et al. 2019). Nevertheless, expressing our concern for our loved ones can be a motivation to seek help, but can also increase guilt.; therefore, we must focus on how our loved ones would benefit from the support of professionals who truly understand the condition rather than expressing how their illness negatively affects us. Reference; Jeter, K., Gillaspy, S., & Leffingwell, T. R. (2019). Motivational Interviewing. In Handbook of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Pediatric Medical Conditions (pp. 69-86). Springer, Cham. PEER 2: What are some key elements in motivating clients to improve health behaviors and outcomes? What role does the family play? Some key elements of motivating clients to improve health behaviors and outcomes include the health belief model which goes back to public health practicum. The first step to improving outcomes, and changing behaviors to exclude bad habits begins recognizing the issues you have such as diet, exercise, an addiction, or bad maintenance of self psychologically (Sarah J, 2015.) After acknowledging the struggle within your self, improving behaviors and outcomes begins with setting a goal, such as losing a certain pounds by the end of next week, self-monitoring, such as giving yourself more attention, maybe weighing yourself daily to see your progress, action planning, such as marking on the calendar of the actions you’re going to take to accomplish the goal you have set, and implementation intention, such as why you are doing it (Sarah J, 2015.) The study by Sarah J. Hardcastle, Jennie Hancox, Anne Hattar, Chloe Maxwell-Smith, Cecilie Thøgersen-Ntoumani, and Martin S. Hagger (2015) recognized that setting a reason as to why your doing the tasks gives you an overall extended thought process not just for yourself but, also for the person you’ve set your mind to (usually a loved one.) I remember back in my public health rotation, I was in a drug rehab center, and during one of my psychosocial assessments one of my patients mentioned that his motivation is his sister and I asked him, how so? He said that his sister was so hurt due to his addiction of drinking that she implied his drinking to be a way of hurting her physically every time she sees him in that condition. So, he mentioned that every time he has a craving to drink he thinks about his sister being hurt and the craving seems to disappear. So, family a very important factor in improvement, as a matter of fact, the family is one of the main sources of encouragement a person can get (Sarah J, 2015.) Improving goals and outcomes come from many things, and self-determination, explained benefits, and education is important when caring for patients with health deficiencies (Sarah J, 2015.) Reference Hardcastle, S. J., Hancox, J., Hattar, A., Maxwell-Smith, C., Thøgersen-Ntoumani, C., & Hagger, M. S. (2015, June 16). Motivating the unmotivated: how can health behavior be changed in those unwilling to change? Retrieved 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468355/