Managing chronic illness is a complex problem for the patient, first of all, and the healthcare provider as well because this specialist should become the support consultant for one’s patient through the course of the disease. At that, the healthcare provider will need to do one’s best to provide effective patient-centered recommendations that will help the patient have a quality life despite the limitations put on him or her by the chronic health disorder. The following discussion aims at the observation of the issues related to chronic illness management.
According to Fayers and Machin (2013), the quality of patients’ life is especially affected by altered mobility and fatigue in the majority of cases. However, the authors state that there are certain illnesses that put larger pressure on the patient with other factors that become weightier, and these are the stigma and unbearable chronic pain (Fayers & Machin, 2013). Addressing the patients from the different age groups and the impact of the chronic disease factors on their quality of life, it is important to note that considerable differences can be observed between the categories of patients. Younger patients in the age category of twelve years are estimated to have more problems with altered mobility and fatigue than patients at the age of seventy-five. For example, if a twelve-year-old is ill with insulin-dependent diabetes and is limited in mobility due to the need to inject the insulin, the quality of life of this patient is more affected than in the patient of seventy-five (Clark, Gong, & Kaciroti, 2014). This circumstance can be explained by the fact that the younger patients are in such a stage of their life that requires more mobility to achieve the maximum realization of their inner potential (Barker, 2015). Another illustration is the fatigue caused by such chronic conditions as the vegetative-vascular dystonia causes more trouble to the twelve-year-old patient than to the seventy-five-year-old one due to the same reason, which is the difference in the patterns of life. Speaking about the way the chronically ill patient’s illness trajectory influence the plan of care, the twelve-year-old patient will need management of his illness focused on improving one’s mobility and the possibility of being active, while the seventy-five-year-old patient will need palliative management focused on the pain management, as well as the measures helping one increase the self-disease-management abilities to minimize the probability of being the burden for the family (Barker, 2015).
Addressing the goals the government set to improve the state of health of the nation in the Healthy People 2020 initiative, there is no doubt that they are of high significance for improving the citizens’ health and quality of life. The relationship between epidemiology and Healthy People 2020 influences the care that I as a transiting to the APN model nurse provide to individuals and populations in multiple ways. First of all, it indicates the health promotion priorities in every risk category of community residents to ensure the high quality of patient care at all three levels of prevention. Next, it facilitates the work of an APN by means of affecting community people’s quality of life and well-being through the federal programs implementation. As a result, an APN acquires powerful support from the government in the area of public health promotion. Such approach is not only more cost-effective but also more efficient, given that the health-promotion care has shown itself more effective than the acute disease control (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011).
References
Barker, A. M. (2015). Advanced practice nursing. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Clark, N. M., Gong, M., & Kaciroti, N. (2014). A model of self-regulation for control of chronic disease. Health Education & Behavior, 41(5), 499-508.
Fayers, P., & Machin, D. (2013). Quality of life: the assessment, analysis and interpretation of patient-reported outcomes. Burlington, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2011). Healthy People 2020. Web.